At least for those platforms. Something needs to be done sooner than later. The integrity of the game is rapidly decreasing because of the lack of interest in dealing with this problem and the complete disregard for the future of the game by the people participating in this behavior. Its like they want the game to die. OW is becoming progressively more dysfunctional as the MM fails to keep up with the manipulation of its system on an aggressive level. Retention of new players is going to be near impossible if this isn’t addressed. Frankly right now I’d tell people on xbox interested in playing OW to go find another game since the community in this game wants to badly to kill it for whatever reason.
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The only problem is it isnt to do with overwatch it self…
I am pretty sure on xbox and ps4 (idk about switch) you can create infinite accounts and have access to all your games
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The reason people are doing it is to sabotage comp. There are steps blizzard can take to mitigate people’s willingness to do so like make the entry level higher, or make sms tied to accounts wanting to play comp, or separate accounts below level 100 away from the rest of the population like some of their other games do. Or they can do nothing and watch console sales diminish to almost nothing come OW2 because they failed to act.
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Console
Comp lvl 25 to 100 the game is 4 years old, almost everyone who wants to play comp has an account above level 100
Or make matchmaker find similarly leveled players, not that our currently ultra-desperate matchmaker will do that
Please and thank you
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nah, i just started on xbox and that is a LONG grind from scratch. it would be a bad experience for new players
im not a pro smurf just someone who had to start over due to computer dying. i already had an xbox and OW gets a solid 60 fps so its not a big drop off from my pc
im not important in the scheme of things but i dont see blizzard raising it to 100. they care about new players even if you dont
The only workaround is probably raising level for comp to 50, to discourage alt accounta
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They care about money, which they make none from with console smurfs.
they cant stop you from having many accounts, they could raise the comp level but that causes other problems
Would be less problems than what console players following the rules are putting up with now.
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if that were true then it would happen. im not holding my breath
Its probably not going to happen because the console market doesn’t matter all that much. We get thrown a bone once in a while but for the most part the game is treated as a joke by everyone involved. Most the senior accounts I’m friends with on xbox have stopped playing comp specifically because of the smurf problem. It ruins the integrity of comp and if nothing is going to be done about it then why play that game mode? But because more people are giving up on comp, instead of stopping what they’re doing because its clearly having negative consequences, they’ve doubled down and started making even more smurfs just for fun. You can’t find a game without at least 3 smurfs in the lobby these days.
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I believe there are more smurf accounts being made than accounts for actual new players, that’s why I suggested that. 100 is a bit of a grind, but it’s not particularly difficult. I honestly also don’t believe most new players hold as much interest in competitive, but I also highly doubt that they’ll raise it to 100.
But what else can they honestly do for console?
Getting a smurf to 50 is not much discouragement. More of discouraging a lot of smurfs than just 1.
So the better option is bend over and take it? I’d rather try to get some change than just “accept defeat” because “I don’t matter”
True or not, you’ve really lost once you’ve quit
We’ve been trying for years now and keep getting the same “wait till later” response. You can’t really blame anyone for just throwing in the towel. This is a game and it was supposed to be fun for everyone, not just the people who abuse the system. There are other games to play and I think people are starting to remember that. If blizzard doesn’t want to treat that as a wake up call that’s on them.
From a developer standpoint console smurfs can be very hard to detect. On pc the problem isnt as rampant because they have full control on how their game is distributed and handled whereas trying to ban accounts that are ran through Microsoft can make the process a lot harder to deal with than you realize. In order to fully stop this problem they have to ask Microsoft to make an exception to how their[Blizzard] game is distributed since the problem stems from game sharing. You can see why this is a lot complicated to figure out on console than on pc, the enviorment on console isnt something they can control only Microsoft can.
I see a lot of console refugees on PC now, I wonder if that’s part of it.
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It would be as simple as requiring a phone number to verify an account or maybe even an email or something. Authentication. Heck, even just impose a level requirement to play ranked. Something. There are things Blizzard could do, if they cared, even on console.
It really isn’t though. ONE LOOK at their gamer score on xbox and they are easily identified. Anyone under 500 gamer score playing on a low level account for a game that’s 4 years old is pretty obvious about what they’re doing.
Increase the lowest level for comp to level 50, not 25.
Problem solved for at least a few years. Grinding to 25 is tough for smurfers (I have two smurfs to play with friends), doubling the amount of time it gets there would be a chore. Not that people won’t do it, but it makes it a longer process.
Getting to 25 can be done in half a day.
Yeah by playing non-stop all day. I’m not familiar with people doing that, but those that do that won’t change. Adding more time to their grind won’t matter because they’ll just do it anyway.