Why are alt accounts allowed ? (genuine question)

General Discussion
62

Ok, english isnt my first language - and dont mean to argue semantics.

Probably not many expected it would have improved the player base.

I’d imagine if a game costs money, those people who spent the money on it are likely more invested in it, and so more inclined not to get their account banned for example.
F2p model brings in a lot of very casual people.

I think there was some MOBA that started to ban smurf accounts, LOL maybe?

they probably had some metrics that showed that people stopped playing by too big numbers by running into smurfs. But - in my understanding - these actions relate to smurfs, not alts, e.g. people who intentionally play in much lower ranks than they should.

Anyways, I’d wager if blizzard saw through some metric that smurfs/alt accounts actually created an issue where players would be stopping playing altogether, by big numbers, they might try to do some actions.

edit: quickly googled and found LoL dev’s stance on smurfs, i quite much agree with it.

Smurf detection. Getting better tools for tracking players on secondary accounts and being able to use that information when we create a match.
If you are a player who wants to create a new account and play normally, we don’t think there is anything wrong with that.
It should be on us to get you into games with people of your skill level .
If you are a player who wants to create a new account to run it down a bunch of games to lower your mmr and smash on low mmr players, we want to detect and ban your account.
We already have some tools for this stuff, but they need to be faster and more accurate.

Now i dont play lol & no idea how easy it is to create alt accounts there. Regardless, they’re fine with alts if you just play on them as normal. Smurfing on the other hand - no no.

It’s pretty much the model all online games go with. Only exception i know of is iRacing (online simracing) that does not allow alt accounts on paper. But of course, they also cant know about them all. The game also costs quite a bit of money, by monthly payment & content cost, which helps with that, up to a point.

63

If I could play the new hero at a masters level, then I wouldn’t need an alt.

If my alt account ranks up to masters, then I will have learned that hero, and yeah, I’ll make a new alt to learn a different hero…

Why is that hard to understand?

64

Just read. It’s already been answered.

It’s not mine either :wink: I just think it’s clearer that way, but I didn’t mean to argue on terms. Like I said, I got your point.

Which is, unless I can be proven otherwise, pretty much what most alt accounts do, whether in rank or QP.

You don’t, for all the reasons previously mentioned.

It’s not hard to understand. It just confirms my point : you’re a masters playing in plat, you’re smurfing. I don’t care that it’s your alt account or not your main hero. You have the knowledge, game sense and mechanics of a masters. You shouldn’t be playing in plat. Period. If you want any proof of that, just look at the innumerable “unranked to GM” videos (I hate all of them, btw) : GM players, climbing in no time on heroes they don’t necessarily play that often or that well, because they have the mechanics, knowledge and game sense of a GM.

65

Sigh. If I’m a masters player playing in plat, then I’m a PLAT PLAYER. What do you think the whole point is of using an alt to practice a new hero? It’s because NO, I CANNOT PLAY THAT HERO AT A MASTERS LEVEL. I CAN PLAY IT AT A PLAT LEVEL. How is this not getting to your brain?

Those are professional, top500 players. They are not your average master’s player, or GM even.

66

Well that is quite hard to concretely prove one way or the another by us, as we dont have much data to go by with.

If you run into someone on an alt account that stomps a plat lobby - without knowing more - you cant tell for sure if that player is a new account of someone high level who is just ranking up, or, its a smurf account that they want to stomp on in low lobbies.

There are players whose ‘alts’ are higher ranked by some degree than their mains. It kind of works both ways.

67

Do you realize how ridiculous that statement is ?

The same applies : better game sense, better knowledge, better mechanics. You’re smurfing. Period.

Well, it’s usually pretty easy to spot : no card, no endorse level… there are signs that are pretty obvious. Also : “new acc of someone high level ranking up” means smurf. As long as you play in lower lobbies where you shouldn’t be because you’re already higher with another account, it’s smurfing.

68

Well call it what you will, but, there is a difference:

If you start a new account and want to rank it up as fast as possible, play well, etc. that is one thing.

If you start a new account and intentionally “play bad” so you are deranked, so you can troll in “bronze lobbies” or what ever that is to me very different thing.

Often when people talk of -smurfs- they mean the latter.
Ill add here what i edited in the above:

Also, regarding this, IMO the change blizzard did maybe over a year ago now was good, namely that they use your QP mmr to ‘seed’ your comp mmr, when you go play comp the first time.
Essentially if you’ve played QP very well you will be starting higher on comp. Of course it also is not perfect and should have limits, but, the benefits probably outweigh the negatives. This helps with alts being ranked too low when they go into comp.

I dont think most players on Alts are playing on alts because they want to play ‘worse’. Most of their alts are all roughly in the same ranks as their mains. But that’s just what I know of the people I play with.

69

Have you ever even tried learning a new hero? Can you play it at the rank that you are with your best hero? The answer is no.

That’s the only reason I would be at plat, instead of say, silver.

But when learning a new hero, you aren’t just automatically masters because you are masters with your best character, ROFL

70

Then play QP, for Juno’s sake ! You’re just trying to find excuses to justify good players playing with bad players. There are no justifications for that.

Then mechanics, game sense and knowledge are irrelevant ? I should be GM then…

When I say “smurf”, I mean someone who will play exceedingly well in some games, then do nothing in others in order to be able to stomp in the next one.

71

…QP HAS MMR TOO. We are going in circles.

…what? I just said that’s why I would be plat instead of silver. Because I have more of those than average, but when learning a new hero, there is still more to learn than “game sense.”

It’s like I say something and it goes in one ear and out the other, lol.

72

Yeah, I have the same feeling. Let’s stop here. You’re not gonna convince me with those arguments anyway. Not that I am not prepared to change my mind, but I need some strong arguments to do so, and you have not provided them at all.

73

Your lack of understanding that simply being in masters with one character (or role) does not mean that I can play all characters in masters, is not my lack of a strong argument, it’s your lack of ability to understand something that is very simply known and understood by just about everyone except for you.

And tanking my MMR in QP is not a solution either.

74

Now you’re introducing a new variable : different roles. Well, that’s why there are different ranks for different roles… I do not contest the fact that you can be masters in dps and not in tank or support. They’re very different play styles. That’s why there’s a different rank for each. No need for another account. Some people are better at some roles than others. We were talking (at least in my mind) about a different hero inside the same role. That being said, I don’t think that if you’re masters in one role, you’ll be silver in another. No way the difference can be that high, considering the game sense and all that. You’ll be high plat or diamond. And therefore, I don’t think a diamond support should be playing dps in silver lobbies (which I’ve seen quite a lot).

So it’s better to kill newbies ? Yeah, I understand…

75

The reason it isn’t is because it would not do anything. I used tank as an example, and I can see you were following up on it, because its the perfect example of why you cannot learn a hero for real in QP. You can learn mechanics in QP but mechanics are a small part of playing a hero.

Its about positioning and timing and that requires games against actual comp teams. QP you get 1-2 playing seriously 1-2 people warming up and hard locking 1 hero and 1-2 people just having fun messing around. That means you wont learn when to use your CDs because you aren’t going to get a normal follow up from either your team or their team.

I could put 100 hours into QP and then queue up for Comp and I would still lose about 1k SR and fall to Plat if I try to play a hero outside of my core. Meaning I would be throwing a LOT of games. That is why alt accounts help. You can avoid throwing all those games and ruining all those lobbies because you can start where you should be.

76

Yes. There’s no benefit in allowing alt accounts - in fact, there are downsides to that (smurfs, ban dodges, etc).

But. There’s no way to prevent creation of alt accounts such that doesn’t induce even worse issues. They tried with SMS and whatnot and it had tremendous backlash. The simple truth is - people don’t want their PII data to be somewhere.

And in the end, those who stand to gain from alt accounts (usually top-500) dodge controls anyways - burner phones, throw-away emails, etc. Imposing those kinds of restrictions en-masse would have massive break of trust.

So, answering your question = trying to prevent alt accounts is a PR nightmare, it creates trust issues and ultimately reduces the player pool. In some jurisdictions it could even be outright illegal to ask/collect PII from minors (and enforcing parental consent would be a huge hassle). Therefore they just chose a lesser of two evils.

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77

I was hard stuck bronze in comp for the longest time no matter what I did and how much I improved I didnt crawl out of bronze so someone told me to make another account. So I did and placed Plat 1 in support.

I went from bronze in dps/support to Gold Dps and Plat support.

I still play on my alt account to get them loot boxes and to do the battle pass on it if I liked enough skins… if not its just to get the prisms

78

Right, sorry I meant tanking as in dropping my MMR. I realize that’s a confusing term with tanks in the game haha.

But yeah, I agree with this completely.

And this.

I don’t know why the OP was fighting me so hard.

79

That means your team let you down. That doesn’t mean you have not learned in QP how to play the hero properly, how to acquire the mechanics and muscle memory. At least, that’s my opinion, but I’m silver, so I guess I don’t know.
Besides, for the 3 people that actually would use it properly to not “tank” their MMR (as your friend said), there are 97 who use it to troll and dominate in lower lobbies, so… anyways. Moving on.

80

First of all, devils and I are far from friends, we just happen to agree on this ONE topic. Secondly, anyone that uses it to “troll and dominate lower lobbies” is called a SMURF, not an ALT. For some reason you are told things 100 times, but still don’t hear it.

81

It’s the same thing, 97% of the time. That’s what I’m saying. Allowing alt accounts MEANS you allow mostly smurfs (either in rank or QP). That’s all I’m saying. Don’t tell me that people mostly use it to protect their dear rank when they’re learning a new hero. I don’t believe that for a second.

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