Free to play ruined overwatch

General Discussion
42

Big corpa will never ban Smurf accs just for being smurf accs, these accounts can make Big corpa potential money.

So as long as they dont cheat / derank to seal club or boost a team mate / be abusive in chat or voice, their hear to stay imo.

Still doesn’t make it right though as it is an actual rule.

I do agree however that the influx of ftp players since OW2 has been an unfun experience as classic fps players try us out & w feedin constantly thinkin their mechanical skill alone can hero play them to stardom… They dont realise there are MOBA elements & team play.

43

If they aren’t doing that… They will just be playing games and aren’t smurf accounts. Just alts… So no issue.

44

Unfortunately many derank their smurf accounts to stay in lower elos to stomp lower elo players and unfortunately many smurfs also charge real money for boosting services.

Those are the smurfs hurting the game, and those are the smurfs contributing to the elo hell situation for many low ranked players from bronze-gold, because there are so many of those type of smurfs, and that’s on top of the cheaters.

1 Like
45

Some do. And a lot of them get punished.

Elo hell :rofl:

46

You don’t even know how big the boosting ‘industry’ is in these type of games are. There are hundreds if not thousands of discord servers and sub-redits and other online forums dedicated to it for this game alone.

This is exactly the bloody point in why F2P has ruined the game.

It is super easy to make new accounts, and that’s why people don’t care if they get banned, as they can just make new accounts in seconds, as long as they have cheap pre-paid cards.

Had Blizzard added a requirement saying that you need an active phone subscription, this wouldn’t be a problem.

Yeah, elo hell, which by the way is a real thing.

47

I do. Sadly. I just don’t really care. It doesn’t impact me.

yznsa is selling Champ 1 account and boosting services for thousands of dollars.

Wouldn’t of made a lot of difference, might put off a handful, but if people want to have more accounts, or if they want to break ToS to do scummy things. They will find a way.

:rofl:
Even Arpad himself would chuckle at that.

48

Adding on from this, im sure there are other methods as well, like an ID check? Send a photo with your ID, Face, and BattleTag to blizz HQ. They will create the account with your legal name on it. Then your ID will be deleted?
But for privacy reasons I say delete the photos and just keep the legal name and OW name linked. As we dont want blizz keeping saves of our identity.
Also im pretty sure other sites do this aswell

49

On paper, a relatively fair idea.

In reality, not going to work. To many different regulations around the world, it would be a pain in the backside to manage…

And do you trust Blizzard to delete it… Some of you don’t trust them to match numbers together… So seems like a slight leap of faith.

50

Maybe make it a third party application. Free from Blizzard, indepedent from all companies and governments bar the UN. An online identity that links to you, where its 1 account : person. From this it can be used to buy products online and create authentic accounts. Think of it as online verification

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51

Seems a little excessive, remember, it’s just a video game.

Also, people tend not to be overly on handing personal data over to 3rd party data brokers.

Then there’s whether it would impact similarly to how a push for voter ID works. Where it disproportionately impacts certain communities over others.

I think forcing the use of a two factor authentication is probably about as far as they can or will go.

52

I think their initial idea was to try something similar but canned it, then canned the idea of having to use an active phone subscription and thus allowed the use of pre-paid phone cards.

That’s cowardly IMHO.

53

More that it alienates a large portion of potential players. And a good number that don’t want to give Blizzard their phone number.

54

I think they messed up with the phobe subscription at beginning. I wans’t able to validate my phone number and I have a phone subscription.

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55

You need a phone number for a new account now. But it isn’t something that’ll gate keep people from playing the game.

56

I don’t know how people can get enough phone numbers for multiple accounts… maybe they could invalide some duplicate accounts if they send a validation SMS each month or something…

57

They could, but that comes at a cost. Is it worth spending it just to cull a small number of accounts.

Their are tools that can help. Or if you’re doing it legit. Most networks will do a pay as you go esim. Usually with a nominal initial top up.

Then you could in theory use family members phones. A work phone. It’s quite simple now to get round it if you wish.

58

Most people have a phone, and a phone plan. People who dont are: Children, People living in extreme poverty, People who dont understand / use tech.
Overwatch is a 12+, most kids use phones.
People in poverty, lets be honest their main priority is NOT overwatch. As it costs money for the tech, and people in poverty would more likely use it to buy food and rent.
People who dont understand / use tech wont play overwatch.

The statement stands that most overwatch players have an phone. Tell me one demographic who play ovverwatch AND dont have a phone?

59

You are right most do. And some that do will not want to give blizzard their personal details.

But you still have to have a phone number to start a new account. So it’s a mute point.

60

What is the cost? Is only send an SMS each month or 3 months to validate each phone number still exists

61

If there is over 100m accounts created. To bulk send messages will cost somewhere between 4.5p to 8p a message (quick Google search so pinch of salt numbers). You’re looking at $4.5m to $8m to send a text message to every account.

Now it’ll probably cost a bit less than that. But you’re looking at a huge sum of money, every 3 months to weed out a nominal number of accounts.

Not sure they’d see that as value adding.