Lol good for them. Should we give them a medal?
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The way the absolute plague that is Smurfing in Overwatch has been handled is absolutely disgusting.
And to think that the devs actually accepted Smurfing as a problem years ago and said that they were working on solutions…
And after that… Silence…
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We’ve been saying it for years. You can’t blame the playerbase. No good systems designer blames the end-user for exploiting options left available to them.
And no good HR manager hires bad systems designers, unless the MBAs tell them it helps with profits.
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State-of-the-art matchmaking with 8+ patents to rigg for engagement and retention at the cost of natural progression. Someone was technical, once.
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Every analytics under the sun to track your session-based MMR and ship you close matches.
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Solid engine, optimized client, polished netcode. Demonstrably sharp algorithms.
Someone had math on the team, once. But when it comes to controlling the alt infestation they just suddenly can’t math?
I don’t get/buy it. Don’t you guys have math?
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This has nothing to do with system design, it is a politician and financial problem, even worst it is a moral problem, where OW team priority is the revenue and the queue time provided by smurf. Listen to the customer, customer priority, customer experience, no nothing here…
That’s what I was getting at. I think they’re smarter than naiveté or willfull ignore. They know the issues but hands are tied = profit based entertainment, not fairplay gaming.
Cough all of them are free games.
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How exactly…by joining Blizzard’s online services, creating a Bnet account, and agreeing to the EULA, Blizzard can do whatever the hell they want with your account. Ban it, rank you up artificially, change your rank, change your ID, whatever. Doesn’t matter if you paid or not.
Honestly banning smurfs MAKES more money for Blizzard. Smurf buys new account, BLizzard bans it, the tool buys another smurf, Blizzard bans it. Rinse and repeat easy $15-$30 each time.
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And each one of them are currently earning 100 times more than OW currently does.
So what if they are free games? The amount of smurfs playing here is huge, very huge. It’s just 10€ for them.
Not really, not if you are not directly breaking rules. And smurfing isnt exactly described anywhere. It doesnt have definition from them.
???
Why would smurfs buy new accounts if they would be banned? Make no sense.
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I had a guy on the enemy team recently who actually thought he won the game while we had 4 smurfs on our team.
Our lowest level player was level 50, the other 3 were about 80. We were all plat. I am 100% certain he went to the forums to complain afterwards.
By this point I can’t take anything that’s being said in these forums seriously.
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Yup, I was in a game yesterday and it was the FIRST time I thought… That guys aim is too good… He was doing nothing but headshotting me (Tracer) and I was blinking around him etc. Watched replay, yh, he was missing just as many shots as he hit, just had a good game for him.
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Alting is allowed by TOS, while overt Smurfing is against TOS. It falls directly under the reporting as an activity which grants an unfair advantage. True Smurfing ie yo-yoing your SR to play down then up is directly against TOS.
That being said, when you can create openly groups called “Road to Bronze” in LFG, and not be reprimanded for it, it speaks volumes on their attitude.
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Smurfing isnt mentioned there anywhere tho.
If blizzard starts banning peopke for doing it in LFG, they will just move into discord servers or they will start doing it solo which will be a lot worse.
Only viable solution is to change requirements for entering competitive.
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Since that (very old) statement, Jeff acknowledged that smurfing is indeed a problem (at least on consoles) and said that Blizzard are working on a fix but not to expect anything until at least Overwatch 2 or later.
The problem is that subsequent statement from Jeff is now also very old and in the meantime smurfs have completely ruined the game on consoles.
That and the fact that nothing is happening til Overwatch 2 - wherein accounts will carry over from Overwatch, mind - means it will continue to be the single biggest problem affecting the game for another year to a year and a half at least.
Whatever solution you’re coming up with better be a doozy, Jeff!
See above.
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They may say they do, but I still see the same old smurfs on console that I’ve been seeing for years now.
They get reported and their smurf account may get temporarily suspended but then they just jump onto another smurf account until the suspension is over.
The only way I can see that Blizzard can fix the smurf problem is to only allow one account per player and, for those players with existing multiple accounts, either a) merge them all together into one account or b) only allow one of the accounts to be playable in Competitive.
It is by the method I indicated, it most certainly is. The language clearly covers yo-yoing your SR to get a an unfair advantage. Clearly.
Doesn’t matter, they should ban them. If they want to Discord, so what. They can do that today.
As for requirements for entering Comp, I am full on with paid token service. At a minimum, they should just let users opt to buy to level 25, or frankly just do away with a level 25 requirement.
Dota, Valorant, Fortnite and Apex are all free to play games, if one smurf gets banned you can just create another account for free.
Overwatch, on the other hand, costs money; plus, Blizzard has no other income from overwatch other than new accounts, while all of the aforementioned games have a way better way to make money.
It’s no surprise Blizz is not banning smurfs, why would they destroy their only revenue?
We know that, its just not acceptable.
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silenthack does that.