Will smurfing ever be considered cheating?

Yea, and i ask again how to deal with that? This is real problem connected to smurfing after all. As deranking is reportable, but people can just be bad… should people just report low lvl players because they “could” be deranking?

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I don’t care if I see a person with widow lev 25-33 killing everyone and know how to deal with every hero I report them, I’m sick of ‘‘alt accounts’’ or whatever, play on your main for the love of the god.

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I have a question and I would appreciate an answer a lot.

How does this logic really make sense when a very significant, if not the majority of Smurfing players end up in a lower skill level by throwing their games all the way to level 25 in order to manipulate their SR.

How does Blizzard expect, during those games where, if the matchmaker actually works as intended, matches are filled with either completely new players or other Smurfs engaging in the same behavior, for legit throwing behaviors to be recognizer or cared for respectively and therefore reported?

Thanks in advance.

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I see no lies here…

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Mmm great opinion dude. You must be super popular on these forums.

Let’s not even take into consideration that this is a competitive game, and there is a general expectation that you will be versing people of close to equal skill than you. It’s no different than an Olympic swimmer taking on 5 years olds in their learn to swim races. It’s straight up an unfair advantage, and it should be bannable.

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Quick play MMR and Competitive Play MMR is separate, the games played before reaching level 25 should have no influence. More details here:

Besides whether it is throwing in quick play or throwing in competitive both are violating the Code of Conduct and both should be reported of you see it.

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Cheating would imply that one is breaking the rules to win.
None of that is happening. You just can’t stand being bested by a player who is better than you.

On a sidenote, i care very little about what others on here think of me.

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They obviously don’t work though.

I know they PLANNED to have such systems in place, but it is super obvious they never implemented them.

Or every Bronze to GM run would eventually be caught, and they are not.

From my perspective, deliberate Bronze to GM runs are never really seen in today’s day and age, unranked to GM yes, but not throwing to get as low as possible first. That behavior stopped around season 3.

And they do have system actively in place and continuing to build more. Most of it is behind the scenes because they don’t want people to game any systems in place. However, as long as you are reporting anyone throwing, then you are helping Blizzard.

Maybe. Maybe not. Not that I am going to call anyone out on it, because that would be against TOS, but I am sure it happens still.

Myself, I think that roleQ and the DPS queue times did more to stop bronze to GM runs than any other system they have put in.

I believe that player did get actioned, though I cannot confirm that obviously.

Maybe they did, but they did get to GM first, and a background system would have spotted that rather than the large number of people mentioning it to Blizzard.

Tomorrow they could create a new account and do it all again, and if they didn’t broadcast it, I would be HIGHLY surprised if it would be punished.

Like, I get that they WERE working on machine learning back in the day, but that was before the layoffs.

They were more than willing to talk about it, and then, just silence. The kind of silence which dead projects have. Nothing about using machine learning to detect anomalies at dev conferences, just nothing.

Like, IF they had a working system, they would be shouting it from the rooftops. Not the details OF the system, but sure as hell they would be talking about the people they banned.

Their silence speaks pretty loudly.

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Wyoming don’t you get tired having to debunk this every single time?

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I will continue to post what public developer posts and resources I have to help shape a positive discussion. I will also share my own opinions. Like all of you I want a fair and balanced game, however, I really work hard in researching my own games to figure out if there is a legitimate issue of players systematically throwing and boosting accounts. I don’t see the evidence consistently enough to believe the perception of “smurfing” is an epidemic issue for the community. Like the video shared above, yes someone did attempt to throw and boost and if possible I will dig into it to see what may or may not have happened, but that is just one person. I browse through the Twitch results and I do see videos, but only from a handful of users. Should those players be punished? Yes. Is there enough to create a complete collapse of the matchmaking system for the entire community? I don’t think so.

Granted, I am just a player like all of you, and from my personal experience as a hard stuck gold/plat brat. I rarely see any behavior to me that suggests the throwing/boosting behavior. This is my own opinion and you are all welcome to disagree with me, because it continues the discussion. The discussions on these forums really are seen by Blizzard and that helps them make decisions to move the game in ways that make it better. Role queue is such an example (which in the early days I was skeptical of that being a good idea).

They’re manipulating an integral part of the matchmaking system to get easier games. That’s cheating.

No freaking shiz dude. You should never be placed against someone that is significantly better than you, BECAUSE IT’S A COMPETITIVE GAME. Getting gutter stomped game after game is only going to teach you so much.

They’re also ruining the game for a hell of a lot of people. It’s all good and well for you to have your opinion on the matter, but playing it down like it’s nothing is just disingenuous as hell.

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And I 100 percent agree with you. As for me personally, I do not support boosting whatsoever but I understand where it can come from. Usually people who are good at the game won’t say no to an offering of making ez money for playing the game they love. Even safran boosted back in 2016 for the same reasons. For them it’s not seen as wrong or good but as a buiseness. I do not believe the the booster is the one in the wrong because he’s basically ranking up without throwing, but the person buying a boosted account because he will ruin many high ranked games for simply being too trash to play at that elo. You are free to disagree with me tho

“Smurfing – and I know this isn’t what you want to hear – isn’t really that big of an issue.”

Well that was before they gave away, what, 50k copies of the game for free?

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They removed the ability to see that, back when I was a bronzie.

We USED to be able to see the highest rank someone had in the season, since it was their icon.

At end of season, the lower ranks would FLOOD with plat+ players, to the point where you had a couple in every game. I played 4+ hours a nice, all week, and recorded each set of people in the game.

When I posted it, with the icons, I was firstly told that it was against TOS to do so (which it was, to be fair), and they removed the icons showing the highest rank someone got in the season.

I am pretty sure, if you altered the badges so people could see it, you would see people posting a week of games badges, and you would get a pretty clear view of the problem or lack of.

RoleQ DID remove a good deal of it, since who was going to wait that long to stomp newbies?

But, I haven’t seen anything else which seems to do say the problem is gone. I’m not in the low ranks, but I help plenty of players who are, and I see their games.

What I am SURE of, is there is no background system watching for this kind of behavior.

I’ll try a different approach.

There is a widely held perception of smurfing damaging the game, and you would think the developers would be keen to get on top of that as well.

ESPECIALLY with OW2 about to come out.

If people don’t believe they are getting fair games, they won’t retain the new players.

I would note, direct account selling/trading is a violation of the EULA and the Blizzard Global Insights team does a lot of investigation into this to find organized and unorganized practices of the behavior. Of course if anyone else sees any website, listing or offer, that can be sent to hacks@blizzard.com.

It is against obviously, but I personally do not see it as a mortally wrong thing. But if course this is entirely subjective, and if blizzard says they do not tolerate it, well it’s their game, so we have to abide by those rules