In order to have matchmaker on your side you have to pay 15$ every month.
While “smurfing is not a problem” i just had 5 games in a row where there was a below lvl 100 player stomping us every game. So here is how it works:
-priviliged status(paying once):
you can play the game and be a artillery meat for subscription players, maybe u get a 1-4 games out of 10 where the match is with other priviliged players.
-subscription status(paying 15$ every month):
You rank up your account easily in less than a week trying to play as bad as possible, and you have about 3 weeks of pure stomping because you paid 15$.
Excacly , by paying every month you can reset that number to a blank slate.
then the report system has no evidence if you are a plat player throwing the game or a >500 bronze player that tries his best.
You manipulate the numbers very easily comparing to your main account with hundreds of hours of stats and you can stomp on people easily. I’m not saying matchmaker takes sides , i say it’s easy to exploit and made perfectly legal(within TOS of ow) so there is no factor disencouraging these people to do that.
So why do people smurf if it doesn’t make a difference?
Maybe they do that because its fun being a bully for some people. Would you say its ok that blizzard is encouraging that behaviour by taking no action against it?
People have various reasons why they smurf, but it has nothing to do with you climbing on your main and only account so how is that related?
If you have troubles to climb post a replay codes so better players can help you identify issues in your gameplay.
Only small % of smurfs has this as reason why they smurf.
Blizzard has no issue with alt account. They dont encourage smurfing. But yes, i think blizzard should do more to convince players to use only one account.
I think you’re missing the point of this entire thread. IfYouHogIDva is saying that the report system isn’t effective enough to get smurfs out early and, as it stands, they are just able to buy a new account and bypass any form of punishment.
I’ve been masters when i had more free time so i know for a fact that if i was unemployed again i would get there eventualy. I know how to play the game.
and you know that from where?
How do you differentiate between an alt account and a smurf? Truth is you need to play at least a couple dozen of matches to get to your main rank since you cannot be placed higher than low diamond and that happens if you are at least above 3.5k and play placements on your main heroes which basically makes alt accounts worthless because why buy a new one if you are going to play your main heroes?
How do they not encourage smurfing? I read forums and watch dev updates. Not once they adressed the issue.
How do they convince players to use only one account after so many years of neglecting the problem? What do you do with all the smurf accounts? Imagine blizz saying that you can’t use multiple accounts from now on and it is a bannable offence. They will basically tell you that the money these people spent on licenses are now worthless. People would sue them for this.
edit: Ok let’s say i buy a new acc and i do placements on heal with zen only which currently is not a very good hero. I get placed in mid gold where you play and then we meet in a game, I play zen and we get stomped because my team can’t play around discord. I then proceed to switch to ana which i got to masters with some time ago and i win the game without any effort. I don’t think that’s fair. Do you? Also im not doing kovaaks anymore but if i did you would stand no chance but matchmaker sees us as equal in skill because it doesn’t take in account all the stats and experience i have from my main. It doesn’t matter if its alt or smurf because the outcome is the same.
Ok its not fair, i get it, but its not so big issue as people say. Idk, i just dont see smurfs as so critical issue. I know how would I solve it but devs obviously dont think it need solution.
Its not the reporting system. It should not be used to report players for smurfing in the first place as its not anywhere described as thing to report. Playing bad or good is not reason to report. Only way how to effectively stop smurfing is place level limitations for entry to competitive.
It would probably help with cheating too as most cheaters use cheats on new accounts.
I work in IT. You can make your app do logs of logged in accounts. You can use machine learning to compare things like heroes played , accuracy and so on. If multiple accounts are logged in in long periods of time you can pinpoint a smurf with pretty high accuracy.You can find evidence quite easily but if you have devs that can’t write a simple line of code that disables golds being matched with top500 players i see on highlight reels then what are we talking about.
If you have friends that constantly smurf i can see how u don’t see a problem since you are on the other side of that spectrum, but i heavily encourage you to get a little bit better on any role and get to mid plat. Things like 7 smurf stomps in a row are common there since most smurfs from low diamond to low masters land there. I also encourage you to watch streamers do unranked to t500(disgusting i know) and see how 1/3 to 1/2 of the time it takes them to climb is in plat because how random matches are because of all the smurfs that are clenched up there
I am not on any side. I use alts account myself and i face smurfs too. Cant say i like it, but I dont face them that often to see it as big issue.
I am not in charge but I would limit entry lvl to comp to lvl 50, if that would not help, amp it up to 75. But let players play open Q from lvl 25. Only role Q would be limited to 50(75).
I play in mid - high plat for years. This is just my new account.
I watched some. Some like yeatle I like as they are very educational, some I dont like. For example when player like samito are doing unranked to gm in one sitting again and again.
If punishments applied to new accounts that log in using the same HWID, even at half strength, then all these problems - POOF, just goes away.
However, Blizzard are unwilling to implement punishments in that way.
lvl100 is fine. If you can’t invest the time to unlock a gamemode you never really wanted to play it in the first place.
BTW, stop defending smurfs. You can report them under gameplay sabotage and cheating. The players make the rules and if enough of us say “no” to that action Blizzard will have our backs as getting a player suspension overturned is almost impossible.
Do not fight me on this, I will never accept that smurfing isn’t intentional gameplay sabotage nor will I accept that they aren’t cheating. The blurbs do not matter and YOU are letting them ruin games by defending their actions because “the description doesn’t say that”.
Punishement is never best way to go to solve the problems.
1 level is 1,5 hours probably if I am not mistaken and i dont count time in search and stuff like that. Lvl 100 would be more than 130 hours of games time. Its fine for you because you already have it, it would not be great for new players at all to be locked away from comp game mode for 130+ hours.
Where am I defending them? I am only sharing my opinion on smurf issue, thats not defending them.
No you cant. There isnt definition of smurfing anywhere. You can pretty much only report players for actively abusing you in game with mei wall for example as stuff like that. Playing bad should not be reason to report. Or you can report derankers for afk which i suggest to do instead of game sabotage as it has more direct results leading to punishement. If they are afk…
I know most of us reports throwers anyway, i am just saying that smurfing is not explained anywhere in report system. And you can pretty much report only their deranking phase. Not what they do after as it is playing good.