The entirety of QP is plagued by smurfs just dominating matches. My friend is new to the game and he’s getting absolutely rolled over every game, it’s really not doing much to convince him to continue playing this game or OW2.
I’m not the best player but I’m fed up with every game just being smurf city. He had a game where a smurf tracer was spawn camping him.
I don’t know what the solution to this ‘plague’ is but there needs to be something Blizzard, something to properly separate new players and smurfs.
Also, can we please make spawn camping reportable?
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I think they should legit add an option to specify whether you’re new or an alternate account/have at least played before
There’s nothing wrong with alts, and if they are just ranking up to climb ASAP on a new account then I’m sure they’d have no opposition to being queued with other people who know the game instead of new players
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That sounds good but there will be definitely smurfs who say they’re new 
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I know that, but it’s not like this feature makes it easier to smurf or makes more of them
It’s more like giving the matchmaker an easier idea of where to start you off, it wouldn’t be a super solution but I can’t imagine we’d see an increase in lv 1-10 accounts dominating games
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I agree with the rest of your post, but what? No, absolutely not. Why would you not allow a better player to push their advantage, especially for Tracer, it’s important. And how would you even define that?
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yeah, i get you, thanks for the input 
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Brand new players will get stomped regardless and it will take a lot of time before they get decent enough to enjoy the game properly
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I am newer to the game and I really enjoy it, the community isn’t great because they usually complain a lot but I like the game itself. The new patches seem a lot better, and its a breath of fresh air from a “game” whose patches were braindead and were no fun at all. The queue time is really high, but its not apex legends high, and its still fun to play tank. The only thing I don’t really like is not being able to switch, like in quick play, some people instalock pharah, and I wanna switch to a sniper but I can’t.
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This is an issue they really do need to address for the health of the game. Player retention is diminishing fast due to inaction on this front. Their is supposed to be a MM for this very reason, higher ranked players are circumventing it for their own person enjoyment and no one else’s. New players won’t stay in a game they don’t have fun in.
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Well, I am happy you are enjoying Overwatch and welcome to the community
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Thanks man, it is a really fun game.
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There’s a big difference between killing someone because you know they’re on their way back after dying during a teamfight and actively stopping someone from leaving spawn/playing the game imo
It’s a known problem with older competitive games. Sometimes the “ranked” mode becomes easier than the “casual” mode because you get matched with players your skill level (in theory).
One way they could make ranked better is if they made it so you either did placements like now, or you could choose as a new player (in fact were recommended to) to place at 1500 automatically in exchange for 3000 gold gun points (as genuine new players tend to covet these the most).
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There are two major issues:
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There are not enough new players to match your friend up with. So regardless, he is going to have a bad time starting out. That’s just the way it is.
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“Smurfs”, or more accurately “people who know how to play the game with alt accounts”, are try-harding quick play to level 25 to get the best rating they can. Which is why they spawn camp.
While the level 25 limit was supposed to help filter out new players from competitive and/or make it harder for people to smurf in competitive, it has the reverse effect on quick play of ruining the experience of new players trying the game out for the first time. This will always be that way unless the remove the level 25 cap.
Lastly I want to say that the term “smurf” is typically reserved for players intentionally playing in competitive at a lower rating than they actually are. This term does not apply to quick play. While you may say “smurf” as a new player, the “smurf” may very well be a Gold/Plat rated player (where most people rate at anyway).
Players leveling up their alts to level 25 are not intentionally making new players experience bad. They are trying to get there as quickly as possible so they can play competitive.
When OW2 comes out this will go away for a while when the game gets a surge of new (and returning players). But it will come back when OW2 becomes dull and starts to lose players like the current OW.
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Question: which character is your friend trying to use out of curiosity? I’ve dealt with campers before. Perhaps I can offer advice.
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He’s trying all the heroes, but he’s obviously new, so these smurfs are abusing that fact by spawn camping him
Sadly that is pretty much a problem with every old game but the smurfs definitely doesn’t help either.
Well the spawn area already provides invincibility and health for that reason and has 3 entrances in most cases.
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I’d offer to queue with them, but I’m worried that he’d be put into what I had to work with: being forced to play with level 300+ players with my friends.
Idk. At least I can try to distract the Tracer. Maybe get a lucky headshot.
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IMO there should be opt-in beginners matches. Game asks you when you launch a new account “Is this your first time playing Overwatch” and, if so, it only matches you against other beginners and people with really low MMR, until it detects that you’re overperforming and throws you into regular matchmaking with a “Congrats, you’re a big boi now” message.
I mean, you’ll get some buttheads who lie just so they can stomp, but we’re talking about a mode reserved specifically for people who don’t even know what their abilities are yet. If matchmaking can’t differentiate a Master player in that environment after four years of live development then maybe Blizzard just needs to uninstall Battlenet.
But I think there would be a lot of people who are just trying to place alts and really don’t want to stomp news, who would use the feature correctly.
Smurfs are always pretty scummy, as in this scenario smurf spawncamping a new player, who’s probably very obviously a new player and anybody with a shred of experience would probably be able to see it, just because they can and get some jollies out of ruining fun in qp and stroking their ego.