Smurfs should be hardware banned

Competitive Discussion
76

It is interesting that so many people are defending smurfs. They are literally destroying the playing experience for everyone in the tier they are smurfing in.

People complain here because they want to enjoy overwatch, they want to play against players of a similar skill and have closely contested games, but the majority of their games are ruined by the ‘smurf experience’.

I understand that even without smurfs there will be lopsided games sometimes, but I have been playing this game on and off for a long time, this wasn’t a major problem in the first several seasons, these seasons were amazing, the games were fun, people were usually respectful and worked together to try and win.

I happily played around the Diamond/Master level and really enjoyed this game. Then the smurfing problem slowly started to get worse and worse until eventually I stopped enjoying the game as a result, and I quit.

I hadn’t really touched the game for a year or 2. I just recently got back into it and I can hounestly say after playing again for 3+ weeks - Competitive is a lopsided joke, it sucks, and it is boring solely because of Smurfs.

Basically there are three types of scenarios:

  • The smurf is purposely de-ranking and delibately losing
  • The smurf is practicing and won’t work with their team to try and win
  • The smurf is incredibly good, and makes the match lopsided

Now the third is actually the biggest issue. To give you an example I just came from a game which prompted me to post here. I was up against x3 non-ranked level 30s who were amazing, very clear they knew how to play well. We had x1 non-ranked level 30 who was clearly new.

Our tanks would get destroyed in seconds, our team were calling them awful and being extremely toxic. But really, what could they do?. They are Gold/Plat players getting destroyed by players clearly playing at a Master/GM level. Yet people sit there and take it out on them.

And this is the current trend in competitive, 50% of the games I play there is nothing but toxicity towards the people not keeping up because of the lopsidedness of the match. Whether it be the team I’m on, or the other team, there is nothing but blame for non-smurfs getting destoryed by the smurfs.

But that’s just my opinion based on my experiences, I will stop playing this game again soon once lockdown ends because I don’t like watching people get bullied, blizzard seems to only care about sales, and well, this game is just really boring and no one wants to fix the biggest problem with it.

6 Likes
77

Um, no. It would require over 17 hours of play a day to get to it in a week. It’s literally 3 weeks of a full time job. To be able to even see people try to win games in a video game you bought. No actual new person would achieve it before they quit. Outside of cancelled schools and everyone unemployed, it would realistically take someone 3-4 months to achieve.

78

Well-intensioned “alt accounts” still disrupt ladder integrity. Massively so.

  1. The advanced game sense leaks into lower-tier matches. Despite lower mechanical output (on the hero they’re “practicing”). It still ruins games.
  2. Burner mentality. Lootbox roles, no regard for winning. Selfish play. OTP “I’m here to practice X”, cancel, leave, or derp through matches to swap back on main.
  3. Sparsity, low-mixing, and non-transitive effects. Huge population gaps and lack of activity at some ranks during offhours. Same pool of alts reshuffled with/against eachother with a few randoms thrown-in. High (or poor) calibre opponents/matches hosted entirely at the wrong ranks. Longer wait times to match high mmr low sr (or vice versa). Almost no sr is won or lost because the matchmaker has nothing to bite into and zero-sum from further up - people are afraid to grind up there or put off by queue times so there isn’t anything to mix/trial from above or below many ranks.
4 Likes
79

Nothing prevents you and your son from playing. If you have two computers, each with their own account, you’re good to go. Even playing simultaneously.

The MAC Address PLUS other hardware-specific information can readily and easily be used to limit COMPETITIVE/RANKED play on each of those machines to ONE account.

From the game’s perspective, you have said that you will play RANKED on your account from a specific device and no other. You’re free to play with an alt account in ANY other game mode.

This will drastically reduce true smurfing/twinking while preserving the ability to have alt accounts. But each account and each computer can only be valid for ranked play ONCE.

Even this won’t completely eliminate smurfing, but smurfing will be a LOT more expensive and therefore a LOT less prevalent.

Having played in bronze since beta, I can testify that almost NONE of the accounts playing in bronze TODAY are anything other than alt accounts. Sometimes they’re smurfs, sometimes they’re not, but nobody on Earth is buying their first copy of the game anymore.

I also know from multiple friends’ experience that they see smurfs all the time de-ranking and ranking back up again many times in a season SPECIFICALLY so they can get lots of golden guns. They’re gaming the system, not necessarily doing it purely to crush the souls of ACTUAL bronze players – although plenty of them get glee out of that too.

Bottom line is there’s no way to deal with smurfing that doesn’t involve utilizing some kind of hardware information to tie the account to a single instance of that hardware. I’d love to hear alternative ideas if someone has them, but in my experience as a software engineer who’s done a lot of this for the casino industry, I can tell you this is the method that works.

Side note for the people who say smurfs need alt accounts to practice other heroes/roles/whatever. B.S. They can play QP anytime they want for practice, the same as the rest of us.

2 Likes
80

So not true. If you start off low enough getting out is damn near impossible.

5 Likes
81

No, recently, as in end of January recently:

82

Not on consoles they don’t.

83

We both play ranked, and often together, in both OQ and RQ, our roles have vastly differing SR (his tank, my dps, both mid gold-low plat), either of us trying to play on the others account should be considered smurfing right? That’s why we don’t anymore, hense why I bought my own account. From what you’ve said, my sons account is a smurf account, even with it being level 2300+, and mine almost level 300 would be the main account, sometimes he uses my computer while I’m at work (10+ hours a day 5 days a week) simply because mine doesn’t screen lag, or overheat, so linking hardware to an account in our case, would be greatly detrimental to his, or my own playing. Linking a phone number to an account would really be the only TRUE solution without smurfs paying hundreds or more per month for different phone numbers, sure both e-mails are mine, but the phone numbers would be mine and his, since a second phone for myself would just be silly.

84

Phone numbers are trivial to fake. You’d need to upgrade his computer if that’s a huge problem. I believe the integrity of ranked play is much more important than the inconvenience of individual player and their individual situations. It’s like any other sport – if you want to play competitive, you have to pony up.

2 Likes
85

His upgrade is coming, but for the foreseeable future, linking phones to account, specifically cell phones, and enforcing the authenticator would drastically reduce the amount of smurfs, and ult accounts, but that would also be a massive bankloss for Blizzard, so it will never happen. If you link accounts to an authenticator, using a cellphone with said authenticator to allow the app to launch(like you require for the t500) it would solve massive amounts of problems due to smurfs and ults.

2 Likes
86

You can fake phone numbers and forward them with GREAT EASE. It’s not a secure system. That’s why we don’t use it in casinos. Blizzard wouldn’t lose any money, people are free to create as many accounts as they want. Just no comp with them.

1 Like
87

Yes phone numbers can be faked, just like you can fool the system into believing 2 accounts can’t be linked to the same computer, its the same bag of worms, forcing the authenticator EVERYTIME someone logs in would become a hassle for said smurfs/alt accounts. Eventually changing phone numbers/phones in general would get boring, or annoying, stopping the smurf from logging on to an account well below where they play.
I might be wrong, but I truly believe this would help in the long run.

1 Like
88

This is what jeff said

"Starting a new account is not against the rules. Boosting or throwing is against the rules.

If you start a new account and play normally, the matchmaker determines your skill level very quickly and matches you with similar players."

As long as they are not throwing games and as long as they arent boosting other players
They are not breaking rules. Also he has never said its cheating.

89

To the stocks with them!

90

saul goodman couldn‘t have said it better!

1 Like
91

I think most people don’t mind the people making a new account and trying to win as much as the people who purposefully stay at low ranks to stomp on weaker players just for the luls. At least that’s what I mean when I say smurf.

3 Likes
92

also shoud be done with hardstucks, bc only hardstucks will complain about smurfs, and hardstucking is not a competitive approach. So I give you 2 weeks to reform or ban. Your rank should be at least diamond to avoid the ban.

93

Now that is the other half of the Problem, players like you and that toxic behavior calling players “Hardstuck”. Some players dont like cheating the system so they only have 1 account. The more games played on an older account, the greater the average mean of all stats become, which is harder to move out of. So if some prodigy was playing to start he/she gets into Masters, then gets diagnosed with arthritis, they can still play well but their performance is hindered and they drop some ranks because they cant play enough anymore, so they maintain high plat / low diamond, they got the shiniest Diamond border, you going to call them hardstuck? Of course an ignorant sob like you will. You got nothing better to do than be toxic to others to fill your e-peen ego.

Some players have a skill cap, or just dont care about the rank system because they know its pretty much failed / rigged as of now. But they still want fair games that are not titled to one side.

1 Like
94

LFG tool is proof enough that Smurfing is a problem

https://imgur.com/a/fyR6Dob

95

For real, I try to report throw groups in the LFG when I see them but the fact that they can exist show the big issue that exists.

1 Like