Smurfs throw off the balance of ranked games. Plain and simple. The community has been complaining about them for a while, so I want to propose this idea (which is not my idea, but Ubisoft’s idea):
How about requiring 2-Step Verification to play Competitive? Whether it be through a phone number or the Google Authenticator, why not make it harder for smurfs with bad intention (throwing to derank or just messing with the skill balance) to ruin matches?
Ubisoft just implemented this into Rainbow Six Siege to fight against boosters and cheaters, along with cosmetic incentives for those who sign up. I’m not trying to say that Ubisoft is better than Blizzard or that Siege is better than Overwatch, but I think that there are some pages that Blizzard could take from other developers’ books.
This is just an idea. I’d love to hear feedback on this, but let’s keep it light.
Why the grouping is 500 SR in master+ but 1000 SR everywhere else? Cause blizzard are aware it is broken but they cater to their higher ranked players.
I think the smurf problem is over-exaggerated. Climbing in solo queue is very difficult because the player is only one of a team of six and usually there are incompatibilities between team mates (like group of 6 support mains in one team and perhaps a luckier composition in the other team). So there is a huge random in team quality, a luck factor. And smurfs are good scapegoats. Of course a good mccree main will be a smurf for a team of support mains of the same rank.
Whenever I invested the time in building a correct team (non-toxic people with the hero skills I was looking for) I had close to 100% win rate. Why couldn’t those smurfs and aimbotters destroy my gaming experience? There is a possibility that I was fighting against some smurfs in some of my lost matches but even if that was the case it wasn’t a huge problem. I think most of the problems come from the random quality of solo queue teams.
Having two phone numbers or two entries in Google Authenticator is rather easy. On the other hand requiring serious personal identification like passports and stuff like that might significantly decrease the number of customers of the game. I personally wouldn’t bother buying a game that asks for passport or ID card or something similar.
It would be great if the IP is tracked and then copy the MMR of the other account. If its wrong, then start lowering bit by bit.
Smurfs need a certain number of matches to interpolate the MMR but if you track via IP, even if you “fail” to asses the actual number, it will probably get really close.
MAC addresses are used only within the local network which is usually behind a router and it’s NAT. MAC addresses can be spoofed and even if you could track them somehow it would raise privacy issues.
Im guessing you dont work in Networking.
Yeah, devices can be tracked and its not a privacy issue. Nat means nothing to routing pal, its a different layer.
You can connect with your mobile from very different networks and be tracked etc and any network like Blizz has can track you without any specific system added or breaching any privacy policies.
I’m not an expert in networking hardware and don’t have Cisco certification but worked as a software engineer on networking software. While NAT is a different layer it also adds problems when it comes to the ability to track individual machines.
Could you please explain how the MAC of my gamer PC leaves my local network? And even if it leaks somehow, how do you prevent me from spoofing it?
If privacy isn’t an issue then what was the reason for the introduction of SLAAC privacy extensions?
You are actually sending it along with more info to authenticate. Thats why when you get a new PC, even going out through the same router, you get prompted to auth, answer secret question etc. Its not like you are sending it to the world but once you go through ISP and Auth servers, Device ID its there (just like MAC can be).
Yeah if you hack the session or play man in the middle i guess you can spoof it but what would be the point? Someone else spoofing your ID to play OW ? You purposedly spoofing someone elses Device MAC and hijacking a session everytime you play OW from a certain account? .
You are talking about things that 99,9% of the players with smurfs will not be able to achieve nor will be willing to do just to switch back and forth with their smurfs.
Take into account we are not talking about a 100% effective in all cases, unbreachable, unhackable, unavoidable and untraceable way of “knowing” who owns that smurf account and associating temporarely at least the internal MMR of that account. Slaac has absolutely 0 to do with what we are talking here.
We can play “hackers” all day but im not giving a Networking class so, good luck mate. What i said can be done and and im pretty sure its what they use with WoW accounts to identify hackers and gold sellers rings etc. Good day sir.
Blizzard can get the MAC only by querying it in its own programs and sending it to their servers in app data. Doable. Requires elevated privileges that their BNET application seems to have so they might already do it. Raises some privacy issues in my opinion, but whatever. It still wouldn’t protect against spoofing the MAC address (no man in the middle needed). MAC can be changed easily by anyone after a simple google search, no hacks or tools required.
The above technical part isn’t my biggest issue with this solution.
In my opinion it would be far from a solid solution not only because of the MAC-related identification but also the way they would manipulate the account MMRs. Not all new accounts are “smurf” accounts on the same PC. I have 3 accounts and never used any of them to intentionally derank to defeat lower rank players. Bough my alt account to learn new heros exactly because of the low starting MMR. After about 5 levels my MMR with genji was probably around silver and my team mates and enemies were chosen accordingly. Learning something new on an existing account that has high MMR is “throwing”, if you do that then you make a different subgroup of the playerbase whine and after “throwing” you are a “smurf” if you start using some of your main heros. I bought the new account to level up by playing only my worst heros (genji, doomfist, etc…). No smurfing and no throwing.
Being able to assume which account is a smurf one doesn’t solve the intentional derank issue either. Smurfs could still intentionally lose matches as they wished. This could actually be detected much more easily with simple statistics. Who dropped down from master/diamond to bronze/silver within a few days? Easy to answer without network info.
All they would have to do is changing MAC and restarting the machine. Doesn’t sound too much for someone who enjoys screwing other players.
Like i said, im not going to go into a networking class but no, its not that easy and no, 99,9% wont do it.
You also seem to misunderstand what a smurf is.
A smurf account is used in that way indeed but an ALT account does also work the same without the intentionality.
It doesnt matter if you bought an account to practice a new hero, if you are a MASTER player, with your gamesense, awareness and ingame knowledge, you will absolutely mega-destroy bronzes, silvers, golds and platinums. Your MMR should “auto-adjust” with a stealthy measure like this to put you against at least diamonds.
Not saying that it is to prevent you from the temptations of “smurfing” pal, its because its also fair for you. You wont learn anything playing against those ranks if you are a MASTER player and thats a fact.
A master player wont need to “train” against those ranks to learn a new hero, the faster your account gets its internal MMR to your actual MMR with the other account, the better for everyone. It wont be “throwing” because if you truly are a Master Support Player but you TRULY are a silver genji, your MMR (copied via this stealthy measure) will start going down FAST from Masters to silver/gold in a few matches.
Win-Win scenario. Pros? All of it. Cons? Not really many. Not even on the “privacy” side.