Smurfs and problems with it

This game is going to die if u let smurfs play this game like they want…just saying. Im going to change game only for that… GG. One and only thing why u let them do that is money…pretty sad I think. Ppl with better skills should play against with another ppl who have same rank, not below 500-1000 sr of their own (main). There is so much ppl who like to play this game (without so high skills) but I think that there is going to be pretty bad issues after few months only because high skill players “rape” them all. Have fun and hope we “not so skilled guys” find some other and better game without this kind of problems like ow have :slight_smile:

3 Likes

I got sent an angry message on my alt account for being a smurf. That account is the same sr as my main…

3 Likes

It should be pointed out that today, Game Director Jeff Kaplan, has specifically specified the following about owning alternate accounts:

He also followed up stating that we should not worry about reporting any players boosting accounts either.

3 Likes

As I see it, the main problem with all the people complaining about smurfs is that they claim literally everyone that outplays them is one. While there’s no denying that smurfs exist and can be a problem, much of the playerbase just instantly assumes anyone better than them in their elo is a smurf, and that’s just not true. Many need to accept that they both aren’t as good as they assume they are, and that other legitimate players in their bracket are sometimes just better than them. Sometimes it’s someone that is on their way to ranking up, as they should be, but that doesn’t make them a smurf. There are people in the forums who claim every single match has multiple smurfs, because they can’t accept that others may be better than them or that they possibly don’t belong in that bracket their in, and their lack of self awareness is pretty significant. Even if they do regularly encounter smurfs, playing people better than you makes you better. It increases your skill by learning to beat them. You’ll never get better by playing people worse than you, and while some games are unwinnable, there are learning experiences in playing in those games. For instance, if a smurf widow is constantly picking you off, it’s because they’re exploiting your bad positioning and laziness, and learning to adapt to that situation will help you in the future, especially if you improve enough to meet those players regularly in that elo. While it sucks to have to play against smurfs on occasion, you’ll have them on your team sometimes too, and either way, you can only get better by experiencing players who outskill you from time to time. Not every player who is better means that’s a smurf, and I hope some players stop blaming every loss on smurfs and learn to accept that sometimes, you just aren’t the best player in your elo.

3 Likes

Says the smurf…

Honestly guy, I have 500+ hours of experience in one single bracket, I have 120+ hours on one single character in this bracket. Do you really think i cannot distinguish between someone who is slightly better than usual in this bracket and someone who is just completely out of the scale?

And I can guarantuee you, there were smurfs in every single game I played the last 4-5 weeksm which is incredible as Jeff Kaplan said that Blizz is going to do something about that problem almost one year ago. But what they really did is invite even more smurfs with the recent Overwatch sale.

2 Likes

Smurf is never a problem,
purposely throwing and deranking, is.

2 Likes

Well, as we are missing a term for people deranking their smurf accounts, while I´ve seen smurfs at level 600+ as well, so they also do derank their main accounts, I just go with the term “smurf” for players who deliberately derank to get to an SR that is way below their actual capabilities.

But this isn´t even the only problem, beside players who are doing this for fun, there are tons of boosting services out there, so a lot of those smurfs you meet in comp are played by professionals to boost the account.

As there seem to be not too many players left in OW at least in my bracket, I started noting the names of players in comp games, and I do meet lots of them twice or three times in a row, which is pretty unlikely in a game with a high player count, so it is no wonder that I have smurfs, professional or fun ones, in almost every comp game.

Before someone hops in here to tell me I´m too bad to even be able to recognize a smurf, this guy would need to explain why I never meet a smurf in QP or Arcade, but in every single game in comp. And I DO lose in QP and Arcade, but never, not a single time, because of smurf players on the other side.

Maybe I should just abandon Comp, like seemingly most of the other players in my bracket already have, have fun games without ranking, instead of extremely annoying games that are either won by smurf, if I happen to have them on my team, or lost by smurf, when the opposing team gets them.

P.S.: There´s also another problem with these smurfs, they make climbing almost impossible as the game decides how many points you get for a win by comparing your performance to the performance of other players of the same character in your bracket. When a lot of those players are smurfs now, the average performance rises, leaving you with less points gained per win and more points lost on a loss.

Money can´t be the reason why Blizz does nothing. Even someone as stupid as a peacounter with the attention span of a fruit fly should realize that killing a game always nets less money than disallowing cheaters to buy the game. Also, when you ban the accounts of smurfs, they already paid, so no money lost. You also can rest assured that no smurf account will ever pay for lootboxes, so there´s also no additional money to make from not banning them.

2 Likes

What do you mean. Are you saying me instalocking and refusing to switch from Torb Sym and Junk against a Widow that is clicking my head everytime on the same spot at the same time with the same walking pattern and absolutely zero pressure put on them, is NOT my fault? I CAN’T spam my hero without acknowledging that I’m going against my natural counter due to effective range and zone coverage, JUST because I have a deep emotional connection to my hero? I CAN’T just play the same hero over and over again despite bad matchup and non synergistic comp? It was and is always working in my wood tier SR, why do I suddenly get punished by someone of a higher skill than me that puts countless hours practicing HS rooms while I drink my healthy rose leaf organic tea and pressing M1 with my default 16k DPI RGB gaming mouse and 15 in game sens and my blazing fast rock solid 30 FPS walmart monitor? Why is this game so unfair with cheap easy one shots heroes that require zero gamesense compared to my Einstein 9k IQ genius level sentry and turrets placement fabulously and drop dead gorgeous hero??

WHAT BLASPHEMY. I SEEK JUSTICE AND EQUALITY!

~ a supporter of fair and fun balance, xoxo ~

Bronze is only 6% of the player base. So there are less people in bronze than we have in Diamond. There twice as many players in all ranks past 3k than in Bronze.

and the math of a smurf in every game just doesn’t line up and I have a hard time with boosters being down in bronze to scoop people out of a 3+ year old game that is a shell of it’s popularity. Oh I think there are troll players etc at every SR but they also get split between both teams and again as I said, the raw math numbers just don’t line up to have the smurfs/boosters in every game.

whether you get smurf on your games or not, its not their fault you’re hardstuck

smurfs can be on both teams, they don’t affect your winrate at all

As daddy Jeff stated it is no problem i am currently placing an alt account in bronze/low silver. It is no problem if i will play around 1500 SR below my mains right?

I mean i was not planning to do that but since the game is going down the drain might as well roll some bronze and silver players as long as they are still around

1 Like

I didn’t have a smurf but I had a duo who threw my games after crap talking me for 5min saying I wasn’t healing enough when I healed 14.9kk(as gold)… and two golds as well then… next game of course they get put on the enemy team and then try hard kill me and target me over and over then talk even more crap after that game to me. This community is pure and utter cancer. but because I called them A-holes after all the torment ill be banned… its screwed up…

Sure, they can and will be on both teams, but the distribution of them is totally random. It’s very possible to get 5 games in a row where you deal with a combination of throwers on your team AND smurfs on the enemy team, making those games completely unwinnable. After that, now you’ll most likely be tilted, which means your future games for that day are completely shot.

To say that smurfs and throwers don’t affect your winrate at all is moronic. Not only DO they affect your win/loss rate, they affect EVERYONE’S. And not nearly enough is done to combat it, considering the game’s profitability depends on smurf accounts (oh, and OWL gambling dens).

It is not about win rate really, if I play enough games, it is always close to 50%, so it is either lose now or lose in the future.

However, smurfs do ruin games, no matter which side they are on. They either destroy enemy team, or destroy your team, and there is little you could do, really. I hate wasting time for an almost guaranteed win or lose.

1 Like

Okay, lets make overwatch free then, so people can smurf exclusively. Every new overwatch season, people will make another account for free to see where they place, every single time, on every single rank…

Great logic there, lets not make people pay money to smurf lets just give em the ability for free, so EVERYONE can do it, even kids with no money…
yeah…lol

Same thing, this account is the exactly same rank as main, i didn’t even place that much lower when i made it, and people see my level and everytime i play good, they b***ch about me smurfing.
I just take it as a compliment

Smurfs are raping the already weak matching system

How? by deliberately going into the game as a newbie profile you will create an unbalance environment in the game in two ways:

  1. deliberately play crap characters you’re not familiar with on purpose and get everyone killed, no different from throwing. Before they forced the 2v2v2 people would keep playing that character to they’re happy there’s no hope

thus using the excuse “duh QP” is for practice is a WEAK excuse, even if thats the case you can’t switch on the last round so we can at least feel some pride??

  1. they are idiots with no lives who adapt to ANY character, meaning they’re skill level ceiling would crush yours, try playing with a bronze lvl2 thats pro

people who say “smurfs are myth” or “whocares” really?? try tell a amateur to fighter a person who he thinks is a nobody but is really a MMA fighter see if he dies in a fight or not. In australia that happened to some thugs who went around at night in the city bashing random victims from men/women i.e EVERYONE

He picked a fight who he thought was another innocent bunch of woman who was really a bunch of cage fighters out in drag mucking around in the city as a gag, he got his @ss kicked. So no smurfing DOES matter

SOLUTION: bronze only will get matched with other bronze, how many kills/healing should also determine who gets matched with whom

tell me how can spawn camping be possible if one side is NOT more skilled then the other team?? stop making new maps and fix basic mechanics

P.S while we’re talking about fixing the system, try NO leaving in the last push of a game, im confident in speaking for everyone when we’re sick of games that end as you enter. Once the payload reaches a certain point you can’t exit if you do you get banned for a week

Holy mega necro.

20chars

But when the 5 match placement rounds award plat for 4 losses, is it a true measure or just a carry over from last season? Either the placement matches are broken, or they don’t mean a thing.