Smurfing, pls explain it to me. Are you just sad about your life?

So i really want to understand why people play alternate accounts.
Last game i had a GM (in this match a lvl23 Symmetra) who take the fun of the game.
Oh, i talking about Quickmatch here!
So first question: Why are you doing this? Why dont you just play with your GM account in Quickmatch? So everyone can see " Oh wow, good player, will be hard". Damn, we lost, but he is in GM… so.

Why you have to buy a new account, and then play Symmetra? Is it because you feel good? Smashing all these new and normal/casual players? I think so.
Or give me another explanation.

Smurfs must have a very sad life.

And the 2. QUestion: Blizzard will ignore it so its compulsary: Why isnt there a factor in the quickmatch algorithm which consider the overall playtime in a team? Often i have matches with 4 beginners (under lvl 20) and against a team with lvl 60 to 200.

And stop smurfing, i report it, and hope Blizzard will do something about this in some years. I feel sorry for smurfs which have to increase their ego.

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They do, spending money on more copies of the game is sad altogether.

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Complaining about how people send the money they earn is even sadder tbf.

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Triggered.

(20 Char)

What’s triggered you now? Bless

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ik, they should start hardware banning every account that’s connected to that pc.

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For what offence?

They’ve said many times they are doing nothing wrong and a friend of mine showed me her ban email. The tell you if you want to play again you need to buy another account.

They have said that smurfs do nothing wrong or wdym? Im not aware of what ow devs have said abouts smurfs. But it certainly ruins the game for the average player. it just tells me the devs dont give a damn. They should learn from other games. Look at valorant for instance wich is free to play(makes it a lot more attractive and easy to smurf when u dont have to pay). And many other games aswell.

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He’s gonna disagree with you dude because he is one himself. I agree, they do ruin the experience for newer players.

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well, maybe we should reverse smurf and buy a top500/gm acc and deeeeeestroy their games xD

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xD I agree, if only!

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No. Never said smurfs do nothing wrong.

But 99% of the time, you are not playing against a smurf, just an alt account. Or a new player that has brains.

They have said clearly that throwing, deranking and boosting are all quick bans. But just buying accounts and playing on them normally isn’t an issue. So if you see an account where they have deranked (usually obvious if they’re not private), then report away.

Otherwise you are just reporting someone for being better than you.

Smurfs need to be banned, agreed. If you can find one, well done.

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Well I have offered to buy you another account.

Well i just want to start first off by saying that the Symmetra isn’t technically smurfing.

I doubt the system Blizzard created that places you in the correct ranking after a long time of data collection can put them in the proper ranking after such short time.

And since the player is playing at their best, it’s at most an alternative account.
Since playing at his best will result in them getting into their actual ranking, which is actually allowed.
It’s also hard to manipulate MMR in Quick Play, it doesn’t change quickly and you don’t have any visual statistics to see where you are on the ladder within Quick Play.


Why would someone buy an Alt/Smurf account?

Well high ranked players face high queue times, of course that isn’t much fun if you want a quick competitive game.
Other issues could be present in high ranked games, we can take hero bans as a previous example since that made alt/smurf accounts increase drastically.

Some players buy a new account since they believe they aren’t in their actual ranking.
Those players usually get ranked above their main account, though tend to drop down where they actually were quite quickly.

Others like to have everything under control, same goes for cheaters.
It’s pretty much playing god, which honestly could be fun… but eventually becomes boring because there is no element of surprise anymore.


Well Blizzard doesn’t really ignore it.
It’s not easy to detect a smurf since you’d have to detect throwing.
Because the only part that isn’t allowed with smurfing is the part where they throw into a lower ranking, you can’t make an automatic ban system for this and it takes long to process a report.

Alternative accounts are completely allowed too, so nothing reportable with that too.

Quick Play is meant for quick matches, this means that the MMR isn’t super strict.
There isn’t much data on those new players, so even if you were to create a stricter MMR system these players would still be put in your matches.
Next to that Queue times could increase for QP, which honestly is the last thing we’d need.


Just note that smurfing / using alt accounts isn’t always for boosting their ego.
Creating a stereotype isn’t always going to do you good, even if it seems they are ruining your games.

And well, smurfing is reportable if you have proof of them throwing in that match.
If they are just playing good then there is no rule being broken, thus you are most likely filling the report system with reports that cannot even be actioned by Customer Support.
So i’d recommend only reporting when an actual rule is being broken, this way there is room for reports that can actually be actioned.

The issue is hard to fix without damaging the general playerbase.

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Alright. So let GM players actually stack with their friends and there’ll be significantly less smurfing going on. A lot of them do it because they can’t play with more than 1 of their friends at the time at their own rank.

Some ‘smurfs’ also use secondary accounts to practice roles or heroes that they’re not incredibly good at. Which technically means that they’re not even smurfing in the first place.

Smurfs are only an issue when they hard-lock their main for no particular reason other than to clearly dominate people of lower skill, in which case I agree it’s a lil’ dumb. But there are far more genuine players than smurfs out there and it’s not even close. So that shouldn’t hamper your progress either.

Finally, if you really deserve to climb up in the ranks, you’ll climb. If one spends their time grinding/improving instead of complaining, chances are they might’ve already achieved their desired rank instead of being hardstuck.

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I don’t care how they spend their money what I do care about is how they waste the time of not just myself but others we have no chance against smurfs yet we are forced to deal with them instead of blizzard actually doing something to improve the game… The sad fact is it wouldn’t even be hard to deal with … just make it so a person can avoid them… and I don’t just mean as a team mate because the last thing you want is to have smurfs on the other team … Avoid them from matches. Increase the number of people that can be avoided to 10 and make Bob can chose to avoid Simon from all matches for a full week. It might increase que time but it would be worth it and it would negate not just having to deal with smurfs but aim botters, throwers and just toxic people in general. Creating a far better game one that could be fun yet competitive

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Do something for me.

Open your profile, look at the last 3 seasons (26,25,24).

Tell me how many games you played and what your over all win rate was.

Just testing something here.

(you only need to avoid someone for a couple of hours before they will be long gone from your games)

I find your logic flawed I have seen several of the same smurfs over and over in the last couple months… They win a game or two then they throw a game or too. Its alot more common then you seem to feel it is but then again I doubt you spend alot of time in low elos… I mean I have watched the find a group there are several groups a day looking to derank.

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Do you have proof that they “throw a game or two”.

If so, report them for it, and they will get banned.

What I think you are seeing is typically inconsistent players… Win a couple and play well, then have a couple of bad games.

Yeah there are groups that are deranking. Report them and move on.

My friend and I were in a group a couple weeks back and we faced the same 5 stack of people throwing 6 times in a row. one game they would wind then next they would throw… it got so bad people left the matches over and over. I did report it… but it doesn’t change the fact that it happened and nor the fact that it should never have been allowed to even take place. The fact that it did take place shows the current system isn’t working.