So I joined the Smurf squad to play with gold and plat friends

Competitive Discussion
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They’re now low masters lmao. Is this boosting? But smurfs are allowed right. Also 9/10 placements won got placed 3100 main was top500 but decay lmao I now only play smurf with them friends (3898). Kthxbye

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And you’re the exact problem with Overwatch. Congratz. And btw, yes it is boosting which is bannable.

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People forget what kind of smurfs are allowed:

Smurfs who play just like with their main are not a problem.

Smurfs who intentionally rank down to boost themselves or others are a problem.

What you have done is something blizzard dislikes.

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Why would a smurf play just like their main?

Most smurfs have second accounts to learn characters they are bad at to the point they can’t play those characters on their main without reported for throwing.

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I dont play on my main account cuz of throwers and my friends are crap and play in gold-plat do i just derank myself over and over again then? I literally don’t understand this. Cant play with my friends either way fun game!

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Bli$$ard dislikes money?

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what make you think so ,consider the fact blizard doing nothing to prevent it

i wont be suprised if one day we’re going to find out that blizz gets a cut from the boosters money

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*Can I just clarify I’m no booster I just wanted to play w friends

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That’s a lame excuse. You don’t sound like you have any :cry:

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If blizzard is greedy, they would not give players free lootboxes and even make acquiring skins harder or more expensive.

Stop using this half minded and anecdotal excuse for everything!

Because I have proof blizzard thinks like that:

In this thread, Jeff Kaplan responded and claimed that smurfs are not a problem. However, look at how he defines smurfs…

  1. Smurfing. I would define this as an experienced player buying a second account to reset their account progress and internal matchmaking rating (MMR)

…and connect his base definition with his example…

For example, a few weeks ago one of the Pro Overwatch players created a smurf account and was streaming from it. We were able to watch his MMR internally and compare it against his “main” account. Within 15 games, the MMR’s were equal.

If you link his core definition and example together, you have his complete definition of smurfs:

Someone who buys a second account to reset their progress, yet plays with it as well as with their main account.

On the other hand, smurfs who rank down on purpose can be considered boosters because they carry other players to a higher rank intentionally or accidentally and look what his response to boosters is:

  1. Boosting. This is behavior some players engage in in Competitive Play where one player is more skilled than their partner and attempts to “carry” the lower skilled player to a higher skill tier.

Boosting is bad and we are very actively working on preventing and punishing this behavior. Rules like the 500 SR differential in Comp above Diamond exist because of Boosting. There is nothing about Boosting that is acceptable and we want you to know that we are taking great efforts to minimize the impact on “fair” players

Lastly, the question why no action is taken against smurfs is because it is impossible to find a good solution. Either the solution is too weak and players still are able to buy smurfs or the feature is flawed and innocent players are getting punished, especially when players are the ones judging whether someone’s a smurf or not:

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.

So no, money isn’t the reason why smurfs are allowed. That argument is purely anecdotal anyway and only relies on speculations and conspiracies so we might al well drop that argument that is getting us nowhere.

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lol giving us 1 free loot box every event to make people who haven’t touched the game in months come back is the big proof that they are not greedy. Come on now.

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meanwhile

such a good work blizzard doing

a big streamers stream boosting

you know theres a huge difference between what people say and what happens in practice

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  1. They give a free lootbox each event.
  2. You get a free lootbox each level.
  3. You get 3 free lootboxes by winning arcade.
  4. You get free lootboxes every now and then basen on your endorsement level.
  5. You get free Owl point for watching their twitch streams.
  6. Blizzard changed the lootbox system so you get a lot less duplicates.

If blizzard was greedy, they would have done none of them.

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hah you know, their initial plan with the events was for the skins to be obtainable only though loot boxes and not through coins, right? Only after a heavy community backlash they changed it. Same with duplicates. If Blizzard were allowed to do things their way it’ll be a much different story.

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Which is why I never said that they actively take action against it and merely quoted their response.

That begs a new question: How do you prevent boosters? Streamers are just a minority of boosters in this game after all.

Weird, you were the one who claimed that blizzard doesnt’t listen to the community in another thread and here you are contradicting yourself. If blizzard was greedy, they even wouldn’t have listened to the community.

Oh and then there’s the fact that they are apparently greedy by offering stuff you don’t need and can obtain fairly quickly.

And when we talk about business, no matter whether they’re a multimillion dollar company or not, they don’t want to lose money for a 24/7 service where they have to keep adding content. They have to earn profit. Otherwise, they go downhill.

There’s even an example for a game that didn’t go “greedy”: Splatoon. They made free content and never charged in game purchases and do you know what happened? After around 1 or 2 years, they stopped developing new content. This will happen to Splatoon 2 as well, they stop adding new content at the end of this year. The best speculation for that outcome would be because they have a limited budget and have no way to get more.

Charging a service to get free content faster is only a method to keep a budget that allows them to create new content, fix bugs, and balance heroes.

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great post! thx

this makes a lot of sense :smiley:

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…what’s the point of this post? like what point are you trying to make?

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So basically you can only be successful if you are greedy.

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Point if post there is now golds n plats in masters because I made a smurf to play with friends that ended up getting to 3900 and theyre now 3600 lmao and blizzard dont do anything to counter the smurfing problem.

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Everyone can point a finger to the problem but only a few ones can offer a solution.

Can you suggest an effective solution to the smurf problem?

It has to effectively eliminate smurfs and it has to be flawless so no innocent players get punished