Smurfing is still a thing, and i have proof it is reportable

General Discussion
41

Smurfing is not at all a thing. Some are forced to use a new account because the other has been muted for 700+ days by blizzadmins. Blame them. Not that anyone in comp ever communicates… This game is so over.

42

Smurfing is a problem among many fps’s, the biggest E sport fps game had a huge problem with it for quite a while, but they introduced a system which allowed players to only que against people who are on main accounts, and low and behold the matchmaking got semi sorted, but with overwatch you load into a game, and end up against someone who is much better than you, i admit last time i played comp i ended gold and i couldnt be arsed to play it anymore.
The number of times i have been in a game with a smurf and like you have said it, used to be really simple to check a smurf by looking at the play time on heroes but since they changed it you have to watch killcams and how they play, if blizzard is serious about wanting overwatch to be the best e sports they will need to add some sort of verification to accounts which allow players who only have 1 account to play against other players mains, and if people want to smurf they will only be able to play with other smurfs, the best way to spread a game is through word of mouth, and anyone who asks me if overwatch is worth it , i tell them the truth, it was when it came out but now its just toxicity and full of players who can’t face playing a game against players of equal skill level and need to play against people who have lower SR.

43

I didn’t say anything about snurfing being bannable. And i’m saying quite the opposite of that.
Deranking is bannable since you are trowing the game to lose rank to stay at low elo + i did say “good luck trying to punish that” since overwatch doesn’t punish for bad skill’s.

This might be unfair but no one can ever get real evedance of this and the other guy can play it off like he had a bad game, Deranking is easy all you need is to pick hanzo or widow and sligtly flick away to miss the shot, yes people will call you bad or worse but they can really do anything about that, all you can do is report and hope enough people saw the problem in that guy like you did if not then its not a problem to the higher % of players you play with.

I don’t think or want to belive that smurfs are as big of a problem as people make them out to be, i’ve been dealing with smurfs in all the comp games i ever EVER played, Im in no means a pro player but i’ve been with this game since the start of it and my aiming is ok but poeple hardly let me dominate a full game on my main account, on this account and on my other once, overwatch offers easy heroes that are hard counters to other once but when no one of the team wants to do anything about the guy whos clearly carrying the other team ofc they will lose.

And here’s something real, if enogh people report the smurf he will get punished automatically by the report system so in reallity everything you do can get you punished in this game as long as a nifty group of people report you. That just shows that smurfs don’t bother nearly as many people as the forums will make out since reports on accounts do stack and stay for at least a year. On top of that no one can get real proff of someone smurfing unless its to obvious something people will avoide doing if it ever hits the code of conduct.

And let me tell you all the big streamers this game has to offer have all smurfd and still do to make better content from time to time. Blizzard knows that they are openly smurfing and doing so live on twitch. That shows that blizzard are ok with smurfs and not ok about abusing buggs.

If someone from Blizzard ever sees you do this you will instantly get banned. But if someone from Blizzard watches you smurf nothing will happen. Even if you are deranking by slightly missing your target they can’t really get proffs on that. But they will punish you if enough people reported you.
They are many exploits in this game.

I will give you a 2n example and this is really helpful if you or your team ever get spawn camped or the other team are attacking the last point and you have to stall for your team, but know that it will get you banned.

Pick Ana use sleep on someone tell your team not to wake him up, swap from ana to something els and back and you will have speed dart back on cd letting you perma sleep one player from the other team when your close to your spawn but you trade your ulty charge for a reset on nade and dart and nade can let your 2n healer solo heal when your swaping and the other guy has to abuse a bug to get out of the peram sleep and risk his own account to play the game(you get out by leaving and joining the game).

3ed example ana sleeps you and you know your deaths so you quit and rejoin to get out of spawn and back to your team faster.

But yet you dont see nearly as many people talking about real cheating in this game. And now with the endorse system at work not getting banned is supper easy since they have to take you down to enrose level 1 for you to have a real chance to be punished. And a smurf carrying a game will farm enrose with ease on top ot the fact that not every smurf deranks some will just buy a new accounts since its just 40 euro and when you add the fact that people buy accounts when they get banned by reprot system abouse or something they did its really senable to have more then 1 account.

And yet i will say that only 2 or so % of smurfs matter and make problems, rest are just to close to the standard level of overwatch play.

44

Dude just carry 1 vs 6 easy…
Also I’m diamond and smurfs are an issue… GM players can’t keep up with some top 500 players and they’ve admited that… you want plat/diamond to keep up?

45

Blizz gives them buses now to derank to bronze. Met full stacks of throwers, they use the LFG browser to group.
3 or 4 groups like that it’s already 4x6=24 smurfs wandering in bronze, slaughtering newbies. They apreciate a lot Tracer, Genji and Reaper for that purpose.

Blizz has now tools to see them. The group titles are explicit. Derank is not allowed. So they have to ban now these accounts. It will not stop the phenomenom but they can’t stay like that. There is no excuse now.

46

If you say that cheating is bannable, and you haven’t proven that smurfing is not cheating, then smurfing is bannable as well, because it falls into the category of cheating. The argument “cheating is bannable but smurfing is not” only works if you can make it clear that smurfing is not cheating by definition.

So that trickery makes the skill advantage unfair. That means smurfing can be considered cheating by definition.

However, just like you said:

It is almost impossible to catch a derank-smurf for cheating. Heck, even detecting a smurf isn’t easy either, based on Jeff’s statement:

I’ve also personally witnessed a few cases of players assuming someone is smurfing when they are not. One of the people I play with is highly skilled. He played a ton in the beta. He works on the Heroes of the Storm team and plays Heroes most nights. But occasionally he comes and plays OW with us because he really enjoys the game. As a result, he is way lower level than we are. Most of us are 3-5 stars… and he is about level 30. Every time we group with him, someone accuses him of being a smurf. But he’s not.

Detecting a smurf is difficult and detecting wether the smurf is deranking on purpose or on accident makes is 50 times harder to find out.

In order to do that, Blizzard has to create a flawless system but making that is almost impossible.

Nonetheless, a derank-smurf can be considered a cheater by Blizzard’s definition. Thus, hypothetically speaking, you could report a downrank-smurf for cheating but only if you know for certain they’re a downrank smurf…
Knowing that without any mistake is impossible though…

Personally, I wouldn’t base reports for cheating around smurfs because you can’t be sure whether they’re a smurf or not. It would just lead to misguesses where innocent players are punished because they were falsely accused of downrank-smurfing.

47

Smurfs are NOT a problem. Alt-account or not, if you get on master+ there’s no big difference between a smurf or main player. If you guys are annoyed by smurfs you need to improve your skill, get out of low ranks and you’re fine.

48

Blizzard dont ban hunt smurfs.
They might have banned a smurf or two thanks to alot of people reporting them but thats as far as it goes. I can see that you want smurfing to be considerd cheating but for me aslong as the other guy isnt abusing bugs or usong a 3ed party program than thats not cheating.

Abusing algoritams and matchmaking mechanics is aok its not like players dont do that.

People abused the high que times at night to stack vs people that wore lower rank than themself making for easy wins and it was aok to do so in season 2-3 untill blizzard updated the system.

Maybe if the game depicted peoples rank faster this wont be a big problem.

1 Like
49

Can you stop mentioning the fact that I’m in silver, we get it, well done, you do realise there’s 5 OTHER players on the team.

Stop being an elitest wannabe and stop crying about this so called ‘cheating’. I put up with Smurfs in silver, yes, silver, and we still manage to win.

50

Totally agree :slight_smile:

Because of this, people set there profile to private :wink:

51

In the end you never know if that guy just had the game of his life or if he just was sick if loosing and tried hard. I mean I even get called thrower when I try the most, and sometimes i get called a smurf. And I can tell that I’m neither throwing nor smurfing. But we will never know, bc of privat profiles.

52

Not ashamed tbh. I’m a decent tank, I’m good at the hero, I can’t carry the whole team even though I often get gold damage / kills, which kinda says a lot about the DPS.

53

Fair enough but when myself and a friend were in a Comp game recently we were confused by a 4 stack’s choice in hero’s. My friend messaged them to join chat which they did. They said they were Smurfs now throwing to get to Bronze. My friend did not believe them so they switched hero’s and we started destroying the other team then once they had proved their point they left point and allowed enemy team to win.

I am the least emotional player of OW you will find and never get tilted but have to admit I was mildly annoyed by these guys.

54

oh look, another one who can’t deal with being outplayed by a better player. aayyyy

55

You didn’t provide proof. Only your very personal opinion about what is or is not an “unfair” advantage.
Proof would be quoting an official source saying Blizzard’s actual stance on smurfing. And you have been served just that.

56

I was using it as an example. And the fact you’re only replying to 4 words in my reply just shows that you can’t back up your point of just ‘getting better’. Stop ignoring my replies and answer the real question.

57

Reading your reply a second time, I now see your main issue.
The op is claiming that specific moot points are definite proof, correct?

That makes sense because the only definite proof they provided is the code of conduct yet the aftermath that it’s an “unfair advantage” is hypothetical.

Basically, a better statement than

“I have proof it is reportable”

would be

“I can explain why it is reportable”

58

Also from TOS:

…And, while you can register and play on multiple Accounts, you are not allowed to have more than three (3) Accounts with Blizzard Balance…

Smurfing is allowed, end of the story.

59

This topic will look much cleaner is it was name.
“I think smurfing needs to be a bannable offence.”
Since in all honesty that’s what you are trying to do with this topic.
And this game is death enoff for it to pick on the players who can do good or solo carry(something that’s really hard)

60

But didn’t jeff say in a video for IGN that he can be sure that 6 copies have been sold? (his 6 accounts?)