Nobody is asking for perfect. We are asking for an effort. A serious one. Other game developers say they understand smurfing is a problem and put in effort to cut it back.
Blizzard refuses to acknowledge it half the time and pretends their rank system will solve it. The community wants some of that “better communication” we keep hearing about and to see solutions actually implemented.
See my response above. Blizzard needs to do better yes, but they really do put more effort than what we may realize.
And what is Blizzards thought process on things such as smurfs and alts? Obviously they are different than cheaters, but do they think they are an issue?
Also with this, I believe you. There’s always behind the scenes action that we don’t see. But this is where that communication is extremely valuable. Especially from people who actually are working on it.
I am going to bring up the most recent response from Principal Designer Scott Mercer about this subject.
I definitely feel this. Communication though is a double-edged sword. The more the public knows exactly what Blizzard is doing to stop disruptive play, the players who intentionally and consistently work to be abusive in games will work to find new ways around the steps of prevention and action. This includes cheating, abusive chat, and throwing games.
I do feel that Blizzard should update us more on when actions are being taken even if they are not specifics. Such as how many accounts in a month are actioned. Again though, there is going to be more details coming soon regarding what plans they have to help control disruptive play as we get closer to Overwatch 2’s release.
The problem is other titles have made efforts to remove and punish Smurfs since they acknowledge the damage it is doing to their games. Blizzard does not. Heck Contenders players boost on the side as well. The game has a lot of issues and the smurfing is one that is really causing problems they just refuse to acknowledge yet so anything about.
If you have ANY confirming information about this, send an email to hacks@blizzard.com. Be sure to specify who, what, and where they are doing this. Blizzard has made it very clear to be doing account boosting is against both the In-Game Code of Conduct and is against the rules in all Blizzard sanctioned Overwatch Esports Events (Collegiate, Contenders, and World Cup) with penalties up to and including disqualification from competition.
Blizzard also made it clear that throwing games, account buy/selling, and account boosting, are NOT permitted. They have dedicated teams that work to identify account boosting. (Source) However, as long as you alone control any accounts you have started AND you try to play your best, you are permitted to have multiple accounts. (Source)
There have been so many strange decisions blizzard has made with ow1 it is hard to just accept that they know about the problem and are actively working on it. As it is now the first week and last week of a season you dont even play on your main account, some people say the same thing about weekends.
actually smurfing happens frequently in lower elo’s as they hate facing other of equal skill.
With how you worded it, very explicitly too, you were clearly implying that “THIS EXACT” thing is how it should be.
Hence, why it sounds like you expected perfection of dealing with cheaters & throwers.
The issue is that it’s practically impossible to confirm these things. Without account linking/authentication, how can you know someone isn’t sharing or selling their accounts? How can you qualify someone “trying their best” when “their best” is off on a different battletag? These conditions make it impossible to enforce the smurfing rules unless someone is being completely blatant, so it’s easy for the majority of the toxic players to skirt the system.
I’ve no illusions that this is an easy fix, but it has to start further up the chain, with more precise rules and more punishing penalties to drive people away from abusing the system.
=> change the in-game code of conduct.
=> change the way new accounts are created and track them without violating
privacy. (yes, it is possible to do something like that.)
=> implement real anti-cheat mechanisms, such as:
and in addition, you can utilize already existing methods.
There are excellent ways to deal with the issues that have been complained about for years, and it would be smart to do it before the release of OW2.
You can make unlimited smurfs on console
With only 1 copy of OW, and a new email
Exactly meowjoker and thats why I believe that a battlenet account should be tied to your ip and/or Mac address. Is it foolproof, no bit it will make it extremely hard for smurfs.
I think it would force a smurf to only be able to have 1 account for for there gaming platform. Basically no multiple psn accounts.
Go to Blizzard and do it yourself in that case. It’s always people with 0 knowledge of coding that say things like this.
Paying 5 bucks for a VPN doesn’t sound hard to me.
Just finished a game, with not just a normal cheater but full on Rage cheater, the aimbot was ridiculous and the walls were obvious from before the game even starts.
Whats even more frustrating is when you say something, then you instantly become the “toxic” person and blah blah blah it just becomes a “you’re just bad” and “you’re just a whinner”/“mad cuz bad” While his team instantly defends him and there mercy basically spends the entire game dmg buffing them.
Would love to post a link to the you tube video I just uploaded of it but I can’t post link in the forum.
Title is:
Overwatch Rage hacking Widowmaker (MAGICREFUNDS) with walls 2022 OW Aimbot
Replay code in video description
Well then, how do you deal with people living in dorms? From my own experiences, dorm IPs are often shared (I think… I haven’t been in a US dorm for like 2 years now).
And the whole idea about 1 copy giving multiple OW accounts on consoles? That is actually out of Blizzard’s hand since it ties to the system of family sharing. So it is on Xbox and Playstation side to create a workaround for this.
And also, I can just spend $5 for NordVPN per month if I want to run a couple of different accounts.
I’m a software engineer with over a decade of experience in the field, so don’t project a lack of experience just because you find something difficult to understand.
Plus, I’ve already offered multiple options to help mitigate this issue, two of which require nothing outside of regular SDLC work. This isn’t a matter of development expertise, but rather an issue of product ownership. Blizzard isn’t prioritizing this as an MVP issue - or if they have they’re remaining oddly tight-lipped about it - and until they do it’ll remain one of the game’s biggest problems.
Besides, have you seen the news in the past two years? There’s nothing that could convince me to start working at Blizzard. I’m happy to give my two cents free of charge.
It’s an online FPS. This is how it always has been and always will be. 14 year old Jimmy doesn’t care in the slightest about the games integrity when he googles for Overwatch cheats. There is a huge percentage of people who play games who would even think cheating is funny and it is not a big deal. It’s even worse now than ever before thanks to esports and game streaming. There is so much money to be made with no real life consequence.
If you care about playing a match against other people that is fair and legitimate than online gaming is not for you. It never has been and never will be.
I feel such a strong need to reiterate this.
One of the earlier posters mentioned having smurf/cheaters every round, except for the one round they won … come on.