The Smurf/Troll logic

Competitive Discussion
1

Overwatch was a Christmas gift I received in 2018.

It’s now March and Season 14 was not a very nice introduction to this game. After my first qualification score of 1463, I was prepared to ascend as I got better as a player and suddenly realized something was very wrong and began to learn about the entire smurf/troll issues that some other posts from players have no sympathy for, yet they participate in.

Let’s be clear. There is no difference between a smurf and a troll. If you de-rank, or purchase a second account, to severely stomp the lower ranked, destroying our stats, while perfecting your own, where is our ability to compete legitimately or learn anything when all we get is loss of hard earned SR? I would have been close to platinum with all the SR I lost in Season 14.

Oh, it makes you a better player, yes it has to an extent, but at the expense of my hard earned SR in Season 14, where I was taken down to 500 twice by people who revealed themselves as smurfs in search of memes, or it’s so boring in the higher ranks and so forth. It doesn’t matter the excuse, it’s trolling and Overwatch is infested with it.

Yes, you can block and report to basically have the same issues from the same exact people within a week. I’ve been told “oh, you reported a GM’s girlfriend and so now they don’t like you”. Well, why is a GM allowing a girlfriend to troll the bronze ranks? Clearly, neither of them, nor anyone else who participates in the behavior belong there. Again, why is my legitimate ability to compete negated by people who justify beating the system for nothing more than troll behavior?

And why is it when I take the time to report and block it we are still matched against them until Blizzard decides IF they will do anything about it, and only for the same people to return within a week? With all of the multiple accounts and with all of them “in” on it, while pretending not to be, it’s almost pointless to even play.

If there is no progress, there is no point. So, the smurf/troll logic makes zero sense and there is zero justification for it. Just because you are bored where you are ranked or it’s too serious or whatever the excuse it does not validate your troll behavior impeding on my ability to legitimately compete against players my skill level so that I can beat other bronze players and actually achieve silver when every time I reach 12 or 1300 they all show up and take you back down.

When does that end? When can a smurf/troll (with all of their obvious experience) realize that some of us just want to compete and climb without you wasting what time we have to play the game repeating ourselves to troll behavior we don’t deserve?

If you truly loved the game, you wouldn’t participate in the behavior. Until you can reach that mindset, you just ruin the game for new players. But, you knew that and do it anyway for your own enjoyment. That is a troll.

And that’s precisely why you smurf/troll in the first place. You got owned where you belong. That isn’t our fault. Do like you say to us when you are called on your behavior. Get better and beat those who beat you. I do, you just go get more buddies to triple team me, which makes you AND them a bigger troll. You higher ranked trolls have to triple team a bronze player.

That all in itself just proves I am right.

I don’t want your sympathy. I don’t need it. I want to compete legitimately and as long as the ignorant believe that smurfing/trolling is cool, it will never end. It should be a permanent ban, period. To disrupt one’s ability to play the game as you did so many moons ago is simply nothing more than a troll and that’s very sad you feel that’s cool. Beyond sad.

Practice what you preach and go defeat those who defeat you in the ranks you belong and quit ruining a game for those who want to learn, but can’t really learn being subjected to troll behavior you know you shouldn’t be doing in the first place.

8 Likes
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Some people are unhappy and just want to make others unhappy.

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And they should be permanently banned for grieving others because video games are supposed to be fun. Learning teamwork and the characteristics of multiple characters and the mechanics of what works on each map and so forth cannot be achieved when you have to deal with smurfs/trolls you shouldn’t be dealing with. If they are a known smurf/troll, that account should be banned never to return, so that the world the developers created can flourish with teams of many generations, from Season 1 to Season 15. This cannot be achieved until Blizzard themselves and all of the many players who feel the same as I do unite and take a stand for those of us in the trenches subjected to it.

4

If this is true, then go join an open division team. Seriously, it is the best way to learn the game. Solo queue comp is the worst way to learn the game since it is team based.

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Second accounts are great for learning new roles without buggering your regular Elo. DPS is super fun to play, but I won’t do it on my main account where I tank / heal. My game awareness for those roles is just much better than it is in DPS and there is NEVER a shortage of tanks or healers.

I look forward to role queuing with differentiated SRs.

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You are mean and thats why you get spawncamped. You are literally one of my favorites to kill.

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And you have players like me, basically not enjoying the other roles with the current options and therefore I don’t really want to play my first few comp games as a tank. While I know I got here because of my dps.
But yeah i also have gamesense, if my dps just don’t want to work and hog could pretty much kill everything, I swap to hog. Since I don’t want terrible terrible stats on my main.

Have now another account where I currently really play reinhardt.
The mmr/sr at the end should tell me if I would really throw games if I’d pick main tank.

Since, let’s be real. At one point, you can’t compete anymore with heroes as example tracer. If you’re not improving.
Moving to different skills with mechanicaly easier to handle heroes and letting others perform on a level you self just aren’t capable of right now will climb you to the top ranks. (imho)

(i don’t even really want to go to high bc I don’t want to stop playing her :slight_smile: otherwise i would love to know where I’m gonna land)

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Smurfs wasn’t really even a great show

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You belong right where you are, which is bronze. Smurf is never the problem, you run into smurf like what? one out of ten? and there are 50% chance on your side. You just not good enough to be silver. Face it

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Have you cut all relationships with the person who gave it to you in this state? I would… (It’s a joke mods please don’t ban me)

Here’s the issue. I myself have a ‘smurf’ account but not because I want to ROFLstomp noobs. If I were to play my Mcree or my Hammond at my rank I would get reported for throwing, so I have to have a lower account to practice those. Now every once in a while the team my smurf is on will need me to play off support or I get really mad at a smurf or a jerk and I’ll go Lucio to vindicate myself, but that is most definitely not what the account was created for nor what it is most often used for (tbh I’m usually forced to flex to rein).

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no difference between high bronze and silver. It’s literally the same with one difference.

Silver has less leavers only damn difference.

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Your actions per minute define where you are. If you’re a DPS and it takes you a long time to get kills you won’t get as many, you’ll lose duels, etc. If you play tank and you tank less damage when it matters, clutch save fewer teammates, etc you will lose more games. If you support and bail out teammates while staying alive (calculated risk in positioning, clutch ults, etc) you won’t win as many games.

You’ve got to have massive positioning failures, poor decision making, poor ult usage, etc or you wouldn’t be in bronze. Like you’ve got to be making more wrong decisions than right ones to be in bronze. Upload a video and I’ll make notes for you.

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This isn’t gonna be a popular response but my general rule is to either ask for a draw or throw to make sure people smurfing with that much of a difference lose. I can’t really be bothered to care much anymore and ultimately I don’t stand in their way much at all but I’d rather lose than take the “free win” from people who seem to think I should be thanking them.

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Honestly? Some people (Mostly children and people who tend to have sad, uneventful personal lives)—enjoy the sadistic act of making others feel bad. They want to ruin your time, because it makes them feel in control of SOMETHING in there lives.

They find joy in the annoyance of others. It’s sad, but unfortunately, it’s rampant—and OW is just one of many outlets. In the history of man, there’s always just been unpleasant scummy people.

Don’t let yourself get mad about it. Pity those people. Block, avoid, and move on and if it’s REALLY getting under your skin and making you angry…go play quickplay—or better yet, try another game, or go for a jog or run or anything but play OW, because once it gets under your skin, you’ll not have much fun in any of your next matches.

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Just got out of a game where the enemy had a smurf mccree and he had literally half of the heros in game at 100% winrate this season and yes, he stomped my team. This game sure is fun!

EDIT: The very next round I just got into after the mccree one, got a 2 man group in my team, they sat at the enemy spawn and let the other team kill them.

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Only people that complain about trolls and smurfs are the same people that are in denial that they are the problem. (This message is a automated message posted to threads with the word “smurf”)

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Quoted for truth…

What’s this???

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That’s false. I asked legitimate questions about why people think it’s cool to drop rank and harass ones learning the game and you justify it with falsehoods. Anyone who knows me, knows you are completely wrong. So, if I am mean for calling out smurf stupidity, then so be it.

19

That kind of smurf is super annoying, yes, and should be banned, yes.

However…

That’s not really how that works. In soloq, you’re almost as likely to have a smurf with you as against you; plus, they have to spend a lot of games throwing to maintain low rank, where they give you ‘free’ SR. They do slow your SR change (whether that would be a gain or a loss) by turning a certain number of matches into coinflips that you can’t control, but they don’t substantially alter your overall trajectory… unless you get so angry that you start playing badly. Then you’ll lose a lot of SR.
(Edit: You’ll find a lot more teams with smurfs if you go against groups, and because they’re premade groups unless someone invites a smurf to your group you’ll never have the smurf on your side… so if you want to avoid smurfs, you should solo or duo, never large groups).

Also, when a smurf is just spawn-camping, you want to engage with them as little as possible. As long as they are spawn-camping just one person, all they are doing is making it a 5v5 match. If you send multiple people to deal with them, you’re making it a 4v5 or 3v5 or worse. If multiple people are being spawn-camped, then your priority is getting most or all of you back to the objective. Leave as a group, protect each other. If you can kill the smurf quickly, then do that, but don’t waste time on it. Your priority when opposing a spawn-camping smurf is not the smurf, it’s the part of the team that’s actually playing the objective.

As for the GM’s girlfriend, etc… don’t get into these conversations. They’re there to troll you with game-play, but if you engage them in chat they’ll also gladly troll you with words. You can’t believe what they say anyway because it will just be what they think will make you angry or what they think will be funny to say, or both. How would they know who you reported anyway? If you’re telling people when you report them… don’t. You’re only going to escalate any raging or trolling that might be going on. If someone is worth engaging with, then have a civil conversation. If someone is worth reporting… then they’re not worth talking to. Whenever you report, it should be as part of the set mute, block, report, and ignore.

If you get into extended arguments with either smurfs or people you’re reporting, you’re just going to get yourself angry and lose focus on the game. At best, you’ll go raging and tilted into the following games and cost yourself SR and at worst you’ll say things you shouldn’t and end up getting reported and punished yourself. Do yourself a favor and don’t do that.

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… Except one of them is good at the game.

1 Like