The Biggest Problem For This Game is the One Least Likely To Get Fixed

General Discussion
1

I’m sick of it. I love this game, but I’m sick of it. “What are you talking about?”

We all know this game has problems, from slow (and questionable) balancing to a large lack of content, but I can deal with that and have been for three years. I don’t care about bugs, I don’t care about throwers, I don’t care about onetricks.

But MY GOD have I had it with the number of smurfs in my game. It’s unbelievable. I swear to everything I hold dear every other game I see someone less than level 60 running around killing half the lobby on their own.

No, this isn’t me being salty about losses, I’m actually also salty about wins. When a smurf is in the game, whether they’re dunking your team on the enemy team or dunking the enemy team on your team, the game is ruined instantly.

CASE 1 (The smurf is on the enemy team): This is obvious in how it ruins the game- you feel helpless, you’re completely outclassed by the Widow/Zarya/Zen on the other team solo killing your supports before every single fight. The game ends, you’ve lost SR, your time has been completely wasted.

CASE 2 (The smurf is on your team): This makes the game completely unengaging and completely takes away from the competitive integrity of the system. You sit back on the payload while your Zarya is at the enemy spawn door gravving their DPS for the third time in two fights. The game ends, you gain SR, but your time is still wasted.

The worst part about this is that it’s not going away. We’ve been begging the developers to find a way to deal with the smurf problem for years. But why should they? Every smurf added to the game gives them another $40 or however much this game costs nowadays. No, it’s just too much to raise the Comp level minimum to 50 or 75, it’s too much to lock every account to a phone number or attempt to detect gross overperformance in new accounts.

No, streamers should not be exempt from this at all, I don’t care how educational their “Unranked to GM” challenges are. Alt accounts are NOT necessary, I don’t care what they say.

Like I said, I love this game, and it breaks my heart to see all the hard work put into it ruined by a bunch of 23 year olds in a basement still sucking the empty straw of their Dairy Queen who don’t care at all about other people’s game.

Sorry for the rant, I really needed to get this out because I’m about to explode and bash my head into a wall learning Apex forever. Please, save this game from its own community.

46 Likes
2

Being a low level does not inately mean smurf. Nor do you have to be a higher level to score 3k-6k.

This game is designed to be very easy to pick up and understand. Many of the mechanics such as passive ult generation and no ammo management are to make it possible for the less experienced to still have impact.

Kind of like random crits in tf2.

6 Likes
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My man I’m not an idiot, I’ve seen the difference between a low level player who knows their way around shooters and a low level who’s oneclipping and 180 sticking. Unless I’m playing against Shroud, that’s a smurf.

13 Likes
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Never called you one. You may not be an idiot but you are also not infallible. Meaning your judgement is neither perfect nor unbiased.

A person who knows their way around shooters can very quickly adapt to the extremely forgiving spread and hitbox’s of overwatch.

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personally every time i see a low level i assume its a smurf

18 Likes
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Disagree.

Biggest issue with this game is the vast majority of the player base not knowing how to play optimally.

Think about it. “Smurfs” do the most work against teams that don’t group-up or peek/flank when they shouldn’t. If you let a better player constantly 1v1 then ya, they’ll have huge impact. But, if the people playing this game could just grasp the “group and push together” idea, smurfs would have a lot harder time getting value since they’re forced to rely on their team to outplay yours.

Fix the game’s introductory tools. Fix the player base. And THEN worry about other issues.

7 Likes
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The easiest way to fix this would be to just increase the level cap before you can play competitive. It wouldn’t completely negate the issue, but it would be much more time-consuming and more people wouldn’t bother. It already takes like, what? 7 hours or so to get to level 25? If they made it 50, I guarantee smurfing would drop off pretty quickly.

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Itd only be a temporary fix :woman_shrugging:

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Jeff recently admitted smurfing is a problem and said they’re working on a solution but noted it’s complicated due to the way account creation works on consoles.

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Problem is they’re only saying it’s a problem on consoles… Unsurprisingly it’s because you don’t have to pay for new accounts there. I don’t think they will admit it’s a problem on PC without enough community outrage.

1 Like
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Bliz (nor any other company) will never be able to say “you’re only allowed to buy ONE copy of our game EVER. Now register with your SSN and IP address so we can track this”

so the reality is we have to deal with it for better or worse

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There are currently 2 things that push smurfing to the heights it’s in right now:

  1. The recent banwave that banned a lot of innocent players just pushed them forcefully onto their alt accounts which considerably increased the amount of alt accounts in the game and on ladder. Also since they invest some time on these accounts rather than occasionally hopping on them for friendly games or something they’re more likely to stick to them and/or play them some more even after their main gets unsuspended
  2. Matchmaking quality has been cut down considerably so now players of varying ranks crave for control over their matchmaking experience especially since the system constantly fails to meet player expectations (in worst cases Top500 players are playing with diamonds in the same game in competitive) which makes the failure of the system completely unacceptable and super tilting. New account costs 12€/$ and is a completely refreshing experience for at least 15 hours even if you tryhard and try to get your MMR to climb up. That’s very entertaining for players who have been playing the same way for over thousand hours especially if they’re dissatisfied with the matchmaking experience. This is why alt accounts can never be truly fixed before they deliver a satisfying matchmaking experience
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Same. It’s very easy to tell the difference between a new player and a Genji veteran. Very easy…
:-1: :expressionless:

2 Likes
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No, they said it’s not an easy fix because of how account creation works on consoles.

Any resolution they do for smurfs will undoubtedly apply to every platform the game is on.

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Blizzard can enforce one account per player in Overwatch if they want. It’s their IP after all.

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Literally how though? Like I said there’s nothing stopping anyone from making a new email and new blizzard account and buying another copy,

no way of them knowing its the same person unless they somehow track the individual in real life whether thru SSN, biometric logins like fingerprints/retina scanners, IP address (Which itself can be circumvented with VPNs) or a combination of these

all which are absurdly ridiculous proposals just to ensure one copy of game per person :laughing:

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well they did implement a thing for top 500 where you had to link your account to a phone number to be able to rank so you couldn’t make endless smurf accounts and hold several places in the top 500 without the extra effort to curb that type of behavior.

They could always just make it so you have to link your PSN account to a battle net account which has your phone number on file to play competitive. It would be extra work, but it would make the experience much better imo and make it a lot more difficult to endlessly create accounts to smurf for free with 0 consequences.

1 Like
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Why only smurf? New acc just banned cheater with new imp. cheats.

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This is a very subjective take. Sure, if you’re playing a full rush comp or a very brawly style, then you want your team grouped up. That makes it more difficult (not at all impossible) for a smurf to isolate targets.

However, there are plenty of instances where this is just plain wrong. If you’re playing a dive style, or any comp with flank heroes, you don’t want to be grouped up so that your characters with less mobility can get in their own respective position.

Another example is if you have healers that aren’t brawling. You don’t want your Ana or Zen to be directly in the other teams face, grouped up with your tanks. You want them to be a safe distance away, prepared to heal. That’s the kind of target that’s easy for a smurf to ruin, whereas if a legitimate player at that rank tried to attack the backline it would be a much more fair fight.

You shouldn’t be bottlenecked into playing only one kind of comp and style of play just because there’s a smurf on the other team. Just because it’s possible to counter them doesn’t mean they’re not ruining the game by forcing you into a very specific style, where you’re still at a disadvantage anyway.

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The game also has very simple hero design as heroes feel more like they were developed to do a job.

Ex: Literally Mercy

You don’t have a playstyle with Zarya, Zarya has a playstyle.