Overwatch new true goal

General Discussion
21

No. Smurfing is a malicious act, and not intrinsic to having multiple accounts. You can have only one account and smurf.

Having 2 accounts and playing them normally is perfectly fine.

Why can’t someone just play normally on one account. And then do exactly the same on the other. It literally makes no difference.

I know people who have multiple accounts, one for each server, so their MMR on each is fairly accurate.

People who try to challenge themselves and have multiple accounts as high as possible. (The days when funnyastro had like 6 accounts in the top 10).

Accounts with different hero pools, because some people are still weird and see someone who plays tank a lot and will tell them they can’t DPS.

People like flats who solely play tank on their main since day one. Their MMR will put them in 4400 DPS game, which they aren’t good enough in those roles to do. So has a DPS account that’s in diamond.

That hard stuck diamond player who thought they should be GM for some reason so got a new account to “reset MMR” and ended up in plat.

Different accounts with different sets of friends.

All valid reasons to have multiple accounts, and if you have the time and money to waste doing it more power to you. But none are smurfing.

They sre just legit people, buying an account and playing the game in a legit way.

22

no smurfing is the act of having an alias.
smurfing in of itself isn’t malicious, but people who do smurf tend to do it for malicious purposes.

it’s the same kind of deal as having a burner phone or writing something anonymously or under a pen name.

it’s like saying not all people who wear ski masks are robbers, but all robbers wear ski masks.

just because funny astro tried to have several accounts at top placement isn’t evil intentioned in of itself, but in this case it was actually malicious because 1 person occupied 6 of the top ten slots all by themselves blocking 5 other people from being in the top 10 even though funnyastro is only 1 person.

this is a bad argument, each role have different MMR/SR now.
just because he starts high on dps and will eventually fall down to diamond does not excuse him to get a fresh account, in both cases he’ll make some games sour by playing to get to his proper rank, there’s absolutly no need to have 2 accounts.

you do understand what an alt is?
it’s a different character that you can’t make your main character into and it has progression tied to it that has nothing to do with pvp.

for example an alt would be in OW2 pve mode where you played rein to max talents but now you want to play a different character and you have to start all over collecting those talent points.

there’s no such thing as alts in PVP, just aliases, and since aliases have been nicknamed smurfing after the 2 people who named themselves after smurfs to prey on bad players for fun who used smurf names as aliases.

there’s absolutly no real reason to have an extra account.

you might say “oh he just wants to play with his less skilled friends so he needs a different account”
well sorry to say it, but he’s effectively boosting/smurfing.

someone who is just too good to be placed within the range of his friends and gets an extra account to do so is boosting/smurfing, maybe not maliciously but that’s what ends up happening.

there’s no reason to basically get 2 different ID’s with 2 different names unless you’re a spy.

23

And that is where you are wrong.

" Smurfing or twinking, in video gaming , the act of a high-skilled gamer playing within a lower-level character or competitive bracket."

This is irrelevant of the number of accounts. This is just someone actively making sure their skill rating is much lower than intended.

If someone buys an account and plays normally. They are doing NOTHING wrong.

Just because you don’t think there is a need for multiple accounts, doesn’t make it wrong. Personally, I don’t see the need to spend more money, so I don’t. Others can do what they like.

If your main is diamond. Any other account you have is likely to be anywhere from high gold to diamond.

Ultimately if it is your 1st or 10th account and you play normally. The MMR system will put you where you get put. Nothing more you can do.

24

occupying 6 slots in top 10, making for example the second best player in the world 7th best just because the person who’s number 1 have 6 different accounts, and what about the people who are 11, 12, 13, 14, 15th, they are shoved out of the top 10 because of the narcissism of 1 player.

just having an extra account is not malicious in of itself in most cases, but it does become malicious in many cases depending on how it’s used.

flats is factually in the wrong for getting an extra account when he doesn’t need to when the game actually accounts for that type of playing off-roles now.

as for playing with other people, it’s not malicious in of itself but when they are sufficiently far away from you that you need an extra account to play with them that’s malicious in of itself.

smurfing is just alias to hide your true name to be able to circumvent the system.
that’s what it is initially, what they do with these aliases is different but in a competitive system you’re doing it to try circumvent the system.

flats don’t need to, funnyastro don’t need to.
a friend who’s a lot better getting an account to be able to play with friends, ought not to do that because of the implifications of it.

one does not need to be malicious to do it, but it ends up being either malicious in of itself or superfluous.

imagine if i enter a contest with 10 different aliases and i take the top 10 spots in that contest, well what does that mean? it means i just cheated 9 other people out of the other spots they ought to be in.

but if you want to have a narrow definition of smurfing that’s on you, to me it’s an umbrella term for basically having an alias, an alias that tends to become malicious in some shape or form.

you can view the originators of it being malicious or not, just because they wanted to play with lower skilled players, but what does it mean for players who aren’t high skilled who does it?
well the term would be applied to them too because it is the same thing but it’s just not doing anything specifically to the system in of itself which doesn’t mean they aren’t doing it.

and to be super defined about the origin of it, 2 high skilled people did it to trick low players with an alias to not show what their true identity was in order to play games with them.
they didn’t really cheat the system, they just tricked people into playing with them.
there was no “lower level” or “lower bracket” just low skill players that got tricked into playing high skilled players and these low skilled players could quit out at anytime without any punishment as soon as they realized or didn’t want to play with them.

so if we’re gonna be precise there’s actually nothing in Overwatch that’s smurfing because that’s not the true definition of it.

but sure, i think it’s fine that we don’t share the same idea of what it is, because both of us use it in an adapted form that’s based on it’s origin that can’t really be correct no matter how much we want to be because the definition doesn’t really apply to the circumstance, it’s just us adapting it in 2 different ways.

so either we are both right or we are both wrong.

but in any case i think having extra accounts is wrong because you don’t need to have it and the implifications of having extra accounts can’t actually be used for good, only to be superfluous or bad.

25

The game does not account for that actually.

Look at Emongg. His chat made him do 1 dps placement. It put him in the same ELO as his tank.

Because he’d only ever played tank on that account, the MMR for his DPS was the same as it had no data and would take about 50 games to level it out.

So, Flats decided rather than going down that route, just have a new account for DPS with the MMR set at what his DPS skill is. Diamond.

You are trying to tar everyone with the same brush. One bad egg doesn’t mean everyone is bad or going to be bad.

And just because you wouldn’t buy another account, doesn’t mean it is wrong. I have another account that I haven’t logged into since before role que. It will have me in diamond. But this account is gold/plat, because that is my skill level now.

That account had a different set of friends on. Who no longer play, so I have no need for it now. I took a break and started fresh with a new account.

And yeah, people liked the challenge of trying to fill the top 10. And others liked the challenge of stopping them. But someone having 3 accounts and playing them as would normally is not an issue.

People need to get over “smurfs” because firstly, it almost certainly wasn’t one. And all you are doing is blaming others for your lack of fun/inability to climb (whichever one is your objective) and that is a fundamentally dumb thing to do.

As pointed out inthe shared tweet. Focus on yourself and you will have more fun. A by-product of that will be you win more because you are just enjoying playing the game.

26

the woes of players having to re-adjust their SR rank to match their off-roles does not mean they NEED to get an extra account.
they have the time and the ability to get where they want to be on their main account by just playing.
all it is is just laziness/narcissism.

so it’s superfluous.

and having multiple accounts isn’t malicious in of itself, but it can become malicious not because people mean to, but because what happens inherently is malicious.

let’s take your second account as an example, if you get banned on your main account, do you or do you not play on your second account?
well naturally you would because you want to use your resources because you want to play.
but circumventing a ban is malicious, you got banned for a reason, if it isn’t a good reason then you fight it and try not to sneak in the backdoor.

so do you see what i mean? you don’t want to do it maliciously but it can quickly become malicious depending on the circumstance.

having multiple accounts messes with the system itself, and when you mess with the system you are abusing the game.

just because a player is high skilled don’t mean they are necessarily right about everything.

i’m not saying anyone who gets an extra account is doing it for malicious reasons, but it can quickly become malicious due to the nature of it.

i mean you’re not wrong when you say people shouldn’t worry about smurfs, because they are just anomalies in the system, but you can’t stop people from doing it anyways and they will point to any excuse they can.

if you remove the potentiality of smurfing doesn’t really help these people as they will just make up new excuses for other reasons.

but that’s that and having extra accounts is just unnecessary as i can’t see an actually good reason to have it because all it is to me is a way to flood the system in an unnecessary manner that can only cause problems and the only reason to have them is for laziness or narcissism.

27

So having another account and playing properly in your MMR bracket is worse than playing in an rank far too high and repeatedly soft throwing till one day it balances out?

Sure.

Just because something can become malicious we should ban it all… Right. Just penalise the 99.9% of people doing things properly just because 0.1% do stupid things.

Let’s ban all driving because someone once deliberately ran someone over… It doesn’t work IRL and doesn’t work in game.

People smurfing can be reported and they will be dealt with. But nearly all the people accused of smurfing are not doing what they’ve been accused of.

If I got banned, I might. It is there to be played on if I was so inclined. Using another account to circumvent a ban on the forums is an offence. Playing on another account is not.

Having multiple accounts doesn’t mess with any system. All accounts have their own MMR. You MMR is not dependant on anything other than the ability to play the game. So if you have 10 accounts andare playing normally, they will be fairly similar in MMR.

Your SR might be different because that is partially down to luck of the draw in games. Hence why you can have an account in Plat and one in Diamond. One account has just been lucky enough to win a few more ranked matches. Doesn’t mean you’ve played any better or worse.

28

the thing is, you don’t NEED an extra account, it’s really never the answer to any problem you have.

for emongg it probably would have benefitted him more to fight higher ranked players to the point where his rank diminished because on the way down he would have learned a lot more what it takes to be in those ranks.

and the system was made to account for that, getting an extra account spits in the face of the devs effort to make the system account for that.

that’s actually why they made every role have its own SR/MMR rating to begin with so people wouldn’t need to get extra accounts.

if you want to be fair you would ban all extra accounts, but because it makes them money in one way or another they probably won’t.

but let’s just say for an example that francisco shock just had multiple accounts to play in the OWL with and made multiple teams to compete in it.
would you think that would be fair?
i’m guessing you don’t.

so why would it be anymore fair to do it on ladder?

sure it doesn’t mean much for the rest of the ladder but it compromises what it means to compete, so why would anyone want to climb the ladder if the top players are just gonna take more space than they need to?

more often than not multiple accounts don’t mess with it, but making it common place among every facet can cause problems for the system to judge things fairly.

if i flood the low ranks with a ton of throwing accounts, all those who should be there gets pushed up to a rank they don’t belong in.

there’s really so many things that just tilts the system in unhealthy manners when people choose to get more accounts willingly or not.

sure maybe the system can account for maybe some of it, but it’s such a common place to do it that it just creates it’s own ecosystem that it tilts everything making the ladder lopsided unnecessarily, for what? narcissism and laziness?

to me it just ruins the integrity of the game and there’s nothing that can convince me to think otherwise.

29

Banning extra accounts… That is where you’ve lost me.

Such a poor take on it.

It doesn’t flood the low ranks. As I have said. Only a small percentage of people actually smurf. Punishing everyone just because a small number are bad eggs is odd at best.

I do not understand how it tilts anything. They will only be playing on 1 account at a time. It is not like SR or MMR is a unique number and thus you can’t attain what they have.

All it does that is a little weird is boost the “active” account numbers that Blizzard reports to share holders, which has a completely different set of consequences.

30

That’s fine when someone is say 500 sr above you, then I agree learn from them at a decent pace. However when someone is streaks ahead of you and spawn camps an entire team with a high mobility character (and it doesn’t have to be a grandmaster) their isn’t much learning to be had if you aren’t alive long enough to take anything in.

I’ve seen more and more reports on the forums lately of people leveling characters up to sell to other players - competitive play has no integrity if players don’t compete on a level playing field.

31

What stats are you basing this statement on?

32

Yeah, but I could be 500sr lower than you and spawn camp you.

And practicing will make you better. And you will then win more. Simple logic.

33

Stats?

Know what a smurf is. It is actually rare. What you see are alt account working their way up.

I have said it already. MMR works in such a way that Diamond/Masters/GM players will always place a chunk lower on new accounts because the system doesn’t have the data yet.

So when they place they quickly get up to 3000sr. At that point they just have to grind as performance based adjustments are gone.

34

You missed my point entirely, at 500 sr difference the better player is still going to make mistakes and it’s not likely to be a stomp- thus allowing the player a chance to learn from the other player. However larger sr gaps - a 1000 sr or more you could get killed by a hi mobility character and not even have seen it coming, what do you learn from that?

35

it’s not punishing anyone, it’s treating everybody equally for a thing that doesn’t need to exist.

it does flood the low ranks with thrower accounts, it does flood boosting accounts, it does flood the top spots of the ladder.

all for someones narcissism and laziness it should be allowed when it does nothing good?
i don’t think so.

36

You can group with 1000sr gap though…

And someone at 2850sr is not that much better than someone at 1850.

What do you learn from that, you go watch the VoD and learn how they moved. Then you can either learn to do it yourself… or add it to the memory bank of things people might do and predict it.

Most of Overwatch is predicting your enemy and reacting quicker than them. These are skills you learn from experience.

37

They treat every account equally. The human controlling it is irrelevant.

Person plays, data works out MMR. MMR puts them in a match. Person plays match, MMR goes up or down a little. Rinse and repeat.

Yeah, having multiple accounts isn’t “needed”, but they are not an issue. In fact they have fueled the development of the game up to the point of them flicking over to the sequel.

A player that wants to do dodgy things, will do them. Whether that be on a single account, or have 20. Makes no difference. You punish the malicious action.

Owning multiple copies of something isn’t malicious.

38

so people who make a market out of selling accounts in different skill brackets isn’t an issue, ok.
people who make a market out of selling cheats isn’t either i suppose.

because we can just report them right?

i’m just saying that by allowing to have more accounts enables people to do dodgy things that don’t need to happen in the first place.

it’s far easier to deal with cheaters if they can’t have more than 1 account.
way easier to deal with a thrower that only has 1 account, but it’s multiplied into a problem that blizzard can’t control so the best we have is to just get used to the fact that it exists.

and at that point why should you even report anybody for anything?
they’ll just get on a different account.

39

That is an issue. But that is just a very tiny percentage, as covered in the bad eggs category.

People selling cheats is another issue completely and as no link to owning multiple accounts.

It is easy to deal with cheater now. Hacks are spotted and accounts where it is used are swept up and removed from the pool.

If that person then goes on to another accounts and doesn’t cheat. All is good.

If they go on to another account and cheat, they will soon be removed and we move on.

People who want to derank are an issue, but the ones that are good at it know how to lose without looking like they are throwing. So how can you tell the difference between that and someone just playing badly for a few games. You can’t.

But again, none of this is linked to the amount of accounts someone owns.

Even if you found a way to verify accounts, which is probably likely to happen eventually. People will find a way round.

They tried it with T500. People just got loads of sim cards. As they are free/cheap.

40

people who cheat buy multiple accounts because they get banned, ofcourse it’s linked.
it’s infact not easy to deal with hackersand cheaters as they are in a constant race against anti-cheat in which anti-cheat is constantly losing.

not even valorant with such an invasive anti-cheat manages to beat it, how do you expect overwatch to?

the’re is no way to deal with cheaters, if they want to cheat you can’t stop them.

multiple accounts on its own though i just don’t agree with because i think it’s both cowardly and egotistical.

like who cares if you have 5 accounts in top 10, you’re allready number1 and that’s the only thing that should matter.

yeah, the game doesn’t suck, but people do.
and because they do, they make the game suck for everyone else.