It depends on your definition of smurf. If smurf for you is the player who buys a alt account to throw low-ranked games and farm low-ranked players on purpose, then yes, I agree, they should be hard punished.
If a smurf for you is the player who buys a alt account and does unraked to GM for example, then no, they shouldn’t, because it’s not their fault but the systems fault that it takes almost 100 ranked games to get to your rank if you are GM/top 500 or high masters, plus, it is encouraged by blizzard (AFAIK they many times give streamers free alt account) so it can’t be punished.
Banning smurfs from comp is TRIVIAL. Simply enforce only ONE account from any service provider (Cox, Verizon, etc.) All smurfs log in with the same PC on the same service provider, so detection and enforcement is TRIVIAL.
Practically this can be miscalculated for new accounts or it can misalign.
Thus errors can be caused by creating automated systems for detecting smurfs, since these issues can bump into each other.
Now you can’t just simply perfect the MMR system since new accounts don’t have any previous statistics to go from.
This. People just don’t seem to understand the difference between actual smurfs and alts and how the ranking system works.
For example my alt got placed to mid plat, while my main is high masters.
How should this prevent you from using alt accounts?
For the price of one Overwatch License I can get around 10 phone numbers, so there is no big deal, to get enough phone numbers to get as many accounts as you wish verified, and you do not even have to “fall back” on the very obvious solution of using the phone of friends or family members that do not play Overwatch.
SMS verification in top 500 only works as long as the players “play fair” and only verify one account.
And this kinda works in top 500 because most of the top 500 players are actually pros or streamers, that have a public personality and therefore only could verify accounts that they do not use in public without getting cought.
Ive been top 500 before and technically im not a pro top 500 isnt hard to get if u queue with 6 people on solo queue however it can prove difficult because of the people who choose to be difficult and play bad characters or throw
What Blizzard wanted to do is to prevent that every streamer has 5 accounts in top 500 and so effectively make top 500 a top 100.
Actually even without intention, if they played a good on a new account they eventually would have landed in top 500 again and could not do anything against it.
SMS verification is basically a tool for the players to keep top 500 clean even if they play multiple accounts and it probably works somewhat with the assistance of players, that only verify 1 account for top 500. Although it is obviously hard to say how much, there sure will still be some accounts of the same players in top 500, but if you can not brag in public how good you are to get multiple accounts into top 500 it gets boring for most to do so.
Maybe I am totally wrong and top 500 is still flooded with multiple accounts from the same players, but SMS verification certainly only works if the players uses it as intended. It is “harder” to get a new Overwatch account then to get a new phone number.
But it only works for youtubers and streamers thats why it doesnt work the only reason theres not a ton of smurfs in top 500 cause nobody has the motivation to play 50 matches plus on each account i personally had to play 53 matches to get top 500 cause they didnt count
Just make an ID lock and phone verification. One account per ID/phone number, so if you want to smurf, you would have to ask your family members and friends for their IDs and phones. It would reduce smurfs and alt accounts by at least 80%, because only few people (siblings?) would share their private data for gaming reasons.
Blizzard seems to take the game very serious at a pro level. So that would be a quite professional attempt to regulate the gaming experience even for entry and beginner levels.