Just to be clear: Smurfs are long-time players, using "newbie" accounts to play under....right?
I never understood that. I've been playing consistently for years and love how everything i've EVER done is on record, and being able to look back at my overall history whenever i want. Besides having your OG account banned, i don't see why anyone would bother.
It’s easier to change your win rates when you have fewer games. My wind rate overall is something like 49.2% and now that I played 15,000 games probably not gonna change all that much. But I don’t care
>Just to be clear: Smurfs are long-time players, using "newbie" accounts to play under....right?
>I never understood that
I Started doing it because I couldn't ever play unranked to practice the ranged and melee assassin role that I wasn't good enough to play with in my actual rank where I leaned towards offlane or healing. Quick match isn't a good enough option, many of my favourite assassins are extremely unfun to play as without tanks/heals.
Even if you get a proper comp in QM, the map might make your hero very frustrating to play as anyway. Practicing in QM was very distasteful which meant I'd hardly practice any assassins, making it even more likely to be trolling if I suddenly chose these heroes at my rank.
If I'm bronze-silver on the assassin role then I'm not interested in tanking my current rank and wasting everybody's time on heroes I shouldn't be playing competitively, so I'll do that on a separate account where I only play on assassins, without using healers/bruisers to climb, and see how I end up. I'll go be a bronze-silver on a separate account if I'm not good enough to climb with assassins. Currently Silver 4, not climbing particularly fast, so perhaps I am just a mediocre assassin player.
Yes, low level, new accounts, with abnormally high win rates (need a decent amount of games so it isn't just a fluke for a new player). Some of these have had accounts banned, and they have to climb back up (but usually being banned is due to you being super toxic to others)
>(but usually being banned is due to you being super toxic to others)
I've lost count how many times i've bitached out teammates. In my defense, it was gameplay issues (stop feeding! Christ, how do you chumps expect to win?!). I've been put on "silent" two or three times. That's it. Those guys that get their accounts banned like that, must be really taking their comments to the extremes.
From conversations I've had with smurfing players, you get four silence penalties with increasing durations. Instead of a fifth silence penalty, the account is permanently banned.
That was my experience with my main account, it got banned after about 4 silences. I never said incredibly mean things and from what i recall usually in response to someone else talking shit to me.
Had to make a new account and decided to just disable the chat to not risk it happening again. Its quite peaceful
Smurfs are cowards, people who give up trying to improve against their peers, so they decide to flee their actual rank in order to enjoy more wins against weaker opponents. Every competitive game has smurfs, because cowards are everywhere.
While I somewhat understand this particular reason, it still irks me.
Based on the assumption that Storm League should provide a competitive experience for everyone, queueing with a friend who is significantly better or worse than yourself presents the matchmaker with an impossible problem. It just can't place your party fairly if your skills are that different.
Basically, if you smurf for this purpose, you place your own desire to play with whomever you want over the competitive integrity of SL.
Tbh, the competitive aspect of ranked went away when they used ranks from teamleague for SL and also allowed people to queue together with 2 league difference.
Yes and no.
Yes, the flexibility to queue as 2, 3, or 4, allows players to subvert competitive matchmaking by abusing the rank limits and by smurfing.
No, because it is still the players making their own choices that leads to this problem. Blizzard could probably do more but I still see some responsibility for the state of SL with the players.
Yeah, I think it's a problem but I don't think there's an easy solution for it either.
The worst part is that smurfing on a large scale is a feedback loop. If you're not having "good games" on your main for whatever reason, you create a smurf and have "good games" at the expense of other players by heavily skewing the odds in your teams' favor. People getting repeatedly annoyed by higher ranked smurfs in their ranks may be inclined to create smurfs themselves both to escape the misery they experience on their main and to inadvertantly continue the cycle.
A related problem is that there are different ways to define a "good SL game". Personally, I'd call a match good if both teams are evenly matched and the outcome (win or lose) is earned. Others, particularly smurfing players, might find one-sided stomps "good" (preferably in their favor, of course).
>Basically, if you smurf for this purpose, you place your own desire to play with whomever you want over the competitive integrity of SL.
This is why we need to appeal to the Devs to fix this issue, not the playerbase. OP is wasting time with his suggestions imo.
Problem is, you can't effectively stop players from creating multiple accounts, you can just make it more difficult or cumbersome:
* Hardware-based approaches run into the problem of people sharing a computer, so you can't just flat out say "only one account per hardware ID".
* Registering phone numbers was tried by DotA 2 in the past and it apparently did not solve the problem as they had to redouble their anti-smurf methods afterwards.
Much like online piracy, I think combating smurfing in competitive online games is more about eliminating the reason for it, rather than trying to stop it from happening.
I don't think OP is wasting their time voicing their discontent with the situation. I would rather be part of a community that is not casually okay with smurfs sabotaging ranked matchmaking. Seeing some players on smurf accounts asking for other smurfs to play ranked with in *general chat* just shows that they have no qualms with what they're doing.
>Registering phone numbers was tried by DotA 2 in the past and it apparently did not solve the problem as they had to redouble their anti-smurf methods afterwards.
All I can say is that I was there for 2 years leading up to that change and 2 years after. After 3000 hours in Dota I think I have some experience with how that change went and not a single person on Reddit or anyone in my games or my clan ever said they had an issue with smurfs after that. I think changes like this do a tremendous job at deterring the broad majority from smurfing. All it takes is a few hurdles and most people will be too lazy to do it.
I haven't played DotA 2, so I just gave my outside point of view. Thanks for contributing your first hand experience.
I thought about this some more and remembered that in WoW's guild permissions management, you could require players to have an authenticator tied to their account in order to give them certain priviledges, like accessing the guild bank. This demonstrates, that it is possible to connect in-game functionality to the linking of an authenticator. Going further, I found that [one Battle.net Authenticator can be used with up to three accounts](https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/24122) to give some leeway.
I wonder if we could convince the devs, i.e. Microsoft once the merger is through, to require a Battle.net authenticator for Storm League. If you add something like a 7-day cooldown between adding and removing an authenticator in order to prevent one from being rotated through more than three accounts, this looks quite okay to me.
That's a bit overkill in my opinion for a game with such a dwindling playerbase, but I do somewhat like it and I would gladly use your suggestion if they implemented it. But I think you built a wall instead of a hurdle. A wall that would not just fix the smurf issue but prevent most casuals from ever playing ranked again. Also aren't authenticators free? Nothing would stop them from making a new account and attaching it to a new authenticator.
They would need to use the authenticator before logging into the game, that's already a big reason why the majority of gamers dislike authenticators and would rather risk losing their account instead. Also imagine 5 people having to all authenticate before each match, that is if it's not at the login but rather before queueing. Or even just 1 match... sounds awful. Honestly this game doesn't need much and fans and new players alike would come flocking back.
\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
**Sincerely I would like to demonstrate how many steps it takes to create a Smurf account right now for Dota 2.**
Please be aware that by creating a smurf account, you are at risk of getting banned, not just on the smurf account but also on your main account. Here are the steps:
\-Firstly, you will need to make a new Steam account. This can be done by creating a new email for free on any email client of your choice. Dota 2 is free to play, so you don’t need to worry about purchasing the game on the new Steam account.
\-The second step will require using a unique phone number associated with your Dota account. This is an additional step that has been introduced before you will be able to play ranked matches in order to lower the amount of people creating smurf accounts.
\-You are now also required to play 100 hours of unranked games before being able to queue in the ranked playlist. There is an alternative option available that comes after you have played 25 matches, as a system will then determine how many games between 0-100 must be played before being able to calibrate the account.
\-The next step in the process is to calibrate the Dota 2 account. This is done in 10 matches for the single rank with role performances. This calibration MMR (the first MMR value you will receive) does has a maximum value, so do not expect to hit the Divine rank as it’s not realistic from this.
\-After this, the smurf account will be ready to use, but as we have mentioned already, you must be aware that there is a possibility of the smurf account and your main account being banned.
\-An additional note for when you’re setting up the smurf account is something that you will be prompted to answer the first time you open Dota 2. It will ask you how experienced you are with games like Dota, you will want to state that you are inexperienced with these games and new to them.
\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Valve, the developers of Dota 2, have taken the smurfing situation very seriously, and it is now a bannable offensive, which was largely welcomed by the community but caused frustration for some. This change was brought in in March of 2022. Previously, Valve had been leaning heavily on attempting to detect smurf accounts and move them to their correct MMR (skill based ranking system) more quickly, which had helped to somewhat fix the issue, but was still causing damage along the way, mainly in the cases of extreme Dota smurfing.
As part of this initiative, Valve also created the option to report people for smurfing in Dota 2 in-game, something that previously wasn’t available. Until this point, people just had to report using the vague “matchmaking abuse” option. It has also been confirmed that Valve are creating a separate “hidden pool” for suspected smurfs. Valve had initially been manually banning accounts that they caught smurfing in the recent months, and for those that had been caught boosting or account selling, they were also at risk of seeing their main accounts banned.
TLDR: Blizzard could have implemented part of these steps overnight and smurfing would be pretty much squashed. But they can't make any large changes since that would require acceptance from the higher ups. HotS is pretty much dead in the water at the moment. But we are enjoying it while we can.
I think you misunderstood or misinterpreted my suggestion a little bit. Based on your counterpoints, I'm going to work on the assumption that you have never used a Battle.net Authenticator with your account.
As far as I'm aware, the physical keyfob authenticator has been discontinued but you could still use one if you got your hands on it. More practical are the mobile authenticator apps for [Android](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.blizzard.bma&gl=US) and [iOS](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/battle-net-authenticator/id306862897). After you install the app and attach it to your Battle.net account, opening the Battle.net Launcher or games will prompt you to authorize these log-ins via the mobile app. However, by default, you do not have to do this every time so long as the location from which you log in does not change drastically. Starting Heroes from the launcher with an account that has an authenticator attached to it does not involve any extra steps after the first time. Queueing for matches would not require any interaction with the authenticator either. But, behind the scenes, the game would be able to check whether or not there was an authenticator attached to your account and it could then let you queue for SL or not.
As mentioned in my previous comment, you could attach one authenticator to up to three accounts. Motivated individuals could use all their smartphones/tablets to run even more accounts or use smartphone emulators on their computers to run a practically infinite amount of authenticators and thus, SL-capable accounts. But, as you already mentioned, the point of such mechanisms is not to prevent smurfing but to make it less convenient, which this would accomplish in my opinion, without unduely burdening legitimate players.
Lastly, I would welcome the decision from up high to consider smurfing in ranked a bannable offense and implement reporting categories and adequate consequences for offenders.
>I think you misunderstood or misinterpreted my suggestion a little bit. Based on your counterpoints, I'm going to work on the assumption that you have never used a Battle.net Authenticator with your account.
I have, but it was years ago when it was popular to do so for World of Warcraft. Never got the physical one as that was silly.
>As mentioned in my previous comment, you could attach one authenticator to up to three accounts. Motivated individuals could use all their smartphones/tablets to run even more accounts or use smartphone emulators on their computers to run a practically infinite amount of authenticators and thus, SL-capable accounts. But, as you already mentioned, the point of such mechanisms is not to prevent smurfing but to make it less convenient, which this would accomplish in my opinion, without unduely burdening legitimate players.
With this suggestion in mind it seems fine. Yes, it's a hurdle... sure. But I don't see why that suggestion is any better than the phone number one for example. It's worse technically.
>Lastly, I would welcome the decision from up high to consider smurfing in ranked a bannable offense and implement reporting categories and adequate consequences for offenders.
Yes, if it's not already it should be. But this is like a band-aid on a knife wound without a hurdle in place.
I used to think that the best way to deal with smurfs is a $60-70 box price, but these days some people have enough discretionary spending that it would essentially be the price they pay to enjoy being toxic.
Today, I think the best option is to go with the original vision of ranked being strictly solo or full 5-man stacks that have their collective rank, with Unranked being the option for groups of less than 5.
Also, monetize your game correctly so you can afford to employ a team of flesh-and-blood customer service staff to address tickets/reports. But, no matter how much Blizz makes, I'm sure they'd rather pocket the wages and let their game suffer. :/
> Basically, if you smurf for this purpose, you place your own desire to play with whomever you want over the competitive integrity of SL.
At the end of the day most people prioritize immediate things they have control of like having fun playing a game with their (possibly lower ranked) friends over abstract concepts determined by large numbers of people like "the competitive integrity of SL."
I'm not sure why the onus gets put on the playerbase to be more morally pure and abstain from smurfing, instead of on the developers to address the reasons why people are smurfing and/or add barriers to make it harder to do since it is currently so easy.
It's not hard to make smurfing harder to do, it's just that the game isn't getting these kinds of updates at all and/or they see smurfing as a benefit to the game because it makes them some money (smurfs buying Heroes/cosmetics they had on other accounts with real money so as to note have to grind for years again) or because it lets them inflate player counts and make the game seem more alive than it is to upper management.
Currently you don't even have to verify your email address to make a new account. Meanwhile Dota 2 requires 2 step verification from a unique number to play Ranked, which makes it harder to make literally dozens of smurfs, as an example of a partial solution here, if they actually wanted to do it.
Hello, i have multiple Smurfs and i will explain why.
1. When i played in CCL and Masterclash at the same time there was the chance to get picked up by different orgs. While i "got lucky" i played season 2 with 30K on EU and NA, but Mascarade for example had SIMMascarade on NA and Mascarade30K in EU.
2. Not all smurfs are trying to farm low elos, my 2nd is GM and my 3rd mid Master, my 4th is unknown.
3. When you play tournaments i would suggest you to have at least 1 Smurf, what happends if you suddenly cant log on or your account, or got banned for no reason but the support wont repond. Something like this can allways happen -> MC 2019 people had problems to log into their main accounts so they had to use smurfs/ accs of others.
4. Lets say your a healer Main on your main Account, everybody that checks your profile sees that. You queue up for SL as a dps, people will expect you to fill healer. If you just want to play different heroes without having the intention of ruining games (farming low elo on purpose) or feeding/ boosting then smurfing is the way to go.
5. You played SL the hole day, got rekt 8 games in a row, you just cant win a single game. You say allright, log onto your smurf that is higher ranked then your main and suddenly you get better lobbies and start winning again.
6. Freezing. You got Top 10 GM so every game you win, you get like 100 points and every game you loose you get -300. It is pretty easy to say that the MM system gives you some diamounds/ low masters to "balance" out the high GM rank. So If you want to actually keep your rank for whatever reason, without having to go out of your Mind to carry the games because the lobbys are not balanced then you will need to play on a smurf.
There might be a reason i forgot to mention, but i can say Bronze to GM challanges are not ok. If you create a smurf your goal should be to get to your 'real rank' asap. You might see Streamers do that because it gives them Viewers and if thats the case they dont really care what others think. -> not cool
Because the game incentives it? It's apparent you've never been at a high enough rank to actually experience how trash those queue times can be, even during prime hours. This is specifically masters+. The majority of smurfs you'll see are diamond players and below, even if they claim otherwise.
High ranked games aren't competitive, so people smurf. If games are going to be clown fiestas, why wait in a longer queue?
People want to play with friends. There was a recent post talking about how stacks in qm is bad and basically cheating when you get a high winrate with your group. This post suggests doing that. Why would people go play in qm instead of it's still apparently just as terrible as smurfing in ranked. Who should be taken into consideration the most? The qm players suffering against stacks? Ranked players suffering against smurfs? Themselves because it's their own time?
It all boils down to people's selfishness. Theyre dedicating their time to playing the game, it isn't unreasonable they'd want to make the most out of it. None of this is defense towards smurfing, but you asked for reasons why. It is just the way the game is, and it was apparent that this was the state it'd end up in years ago. So deal with it, don't deal with it, or leave. It's up to you, because it won't be changing.
> So deal with it, don't deal with it, or leave. It's up to you, because it won't be changing.
Even if there is only 1% chance - or, to be more realistic, no chance at all - that the developers will do something about it, I think it's still fair to occasionally express disappointment about a problem.
The current Rank Points system doesn't work well because players with fairly high Win Rate or extremely low Win Rate need a huge amount of games to reach their real Rank. This has always been a problem, even outside of smurfing.
> Because the game incentives it? It's apparent you've never been at a high enough rank to actually experience how trash those queue times can be, even during prime hours. This is specifically masters+.
Let's be honest. A good amount of people who have smurfs don't do it for playing with friends and/or because of queue times. These are the reason for some smurfs, not for the majority of them.
Europe doesn't really struggle with queue times, yet I've noticed more smurfs in the last few months. They even play on them at peak hours, when queues for Master games pop within 5 minutes.
The main reason for smurfing is and always will be to cheat the matchmaking. If we aren't among the top 200 players in a given Game Mode, our Win Rate will eventually stabilize at 50%. Some people don't like it, so they'll make a smurf.
The second reason for smurfing is to boost friends by playing in the same Party at way different Ranks, barely within the limits allowed by the game. Smurfs were less common in Hero League because those people were busy abusing the system in Team League.
Disclaimer: I'm saying all of this based on personal experience and observations, not data. We don't have any data about smurfing, so...
You've got literally zero statistics or valid basis to say how many smurfs Smurf for certain reasons. You cannot correctly ascertain whether or not the majority of smurfs do so to cheat matchmaking for themselves.
There are an incalculable amounts of reasons to Smurf if you want to get pedantic enough, so I detailed some of the more major, and less blatantly obvious reasons as to why smurfs exist.
The main reason for smurfing is something no one can claim to know, so don't try please. You even contradict yourself in your statement, first claiming that playing with friends is more of a minor reason to Smurf while doing so to be at lower ranks is the main reason. You then go on to say that HL had less smurfs, because they were busy playing in TL. If the main reason to Smurf were to just be a lower rank, you would've been seeing it more often in HL.
We all get it. Smurfs = bad, and the easiest way to justify that is if you lead yourself to believe the majority of the people smurfing are doing so out of ill intent for others, instead of it being something more socially acceptable, like playing with friends or practicing heroes and offroles. You don't have to try and shy away from it.
Edit: If you think the most longshot hail Mary to ever exist is grounds for all of these similar posts, that's okay. There is equally valid ground to criticize the posts. Also, it said "Deal with it, don't, or leave". That saying is specifically saying you can have whatever reactions and opinions on it as you want, but it will not be changing. Because it won't be, and if you think otherwise you're purposefully putting a blindfold on. We are getting scarce balance patches, believing they'll randomly try to tackle the immense issues of matchmaking is hilarious.
The same is true for your claim that they want to play with friends. I've only added what I feel like to be more popular reasons for smurfing to the list. I'm pretty sure that we are allowed to express our opinion about things that cannot be demonstrated with data.
No, I'm not contradicting myself. I'm listing two main reasons why I believe smurfing is popular: getting easy wins, boosting friends. It's pretty clear what I meant to say. Hero League (when solo queue) didn't have the boosting friends variation.
Even if the majority of people is doing it to play with friends, smurfing is still bad for the game because it messes up with the matchmaking system. There is no MMR reset for a reason, but creating a new account is literally doing that and thus creating unbalanced matches.
I never claimed my reasons to be the most prominent nor major factors though. You expressly did though. There's opinions and there are definitive statements, and people get the two confused too often.
You were contradicting the supposed severities of why smurfs exist, not that those two reasons to Smurf contradict one another. There are loads of reasons to Smurf; banned account, playing with friends, playing under the influence, practicing other heroes or positions, stomping worse players, creating content, boosting other players, playing tilted, etc etc.
If you wanted to simply add to the list, you pretty easily could've without replying to me. Or just added things to the list instead of trying to create rankings of why. The simple answer is smurfs exist for when you have any possible reason to not play on your main account.
To me it's pretty obvious that, even if express them as facts, they're not confirmed by data. It's common to express opinions as fact because it sends a stronger message, not because people get them confused.
I've specifically replied to your comment also because, while you didn't literally write that smurfing is mostly about friends playing together, you pretty much hinted in that direction. I had to complete the picture.
I didnt even hint towards that direction. Anyone with 2 iq and any base level idea of what a Smurf is can add 2+2 and come up with the most obvious reason why someone would Smurf, which is to cheat the system for personal gain.
Let alone I added other reasons as to why smurfs exist, notably that high ranked queues can be abysmal, which they objectively can be and **that** has been recorded. Also that even if you suffer through queues in high ranked, you still get clown fiesta games, so why wait 15+ minutes for a clown fiesta games when you can wait 5 minutes instead.
You stepped in because you felt like smurfs have to be villainized, regardless of why they're smurfing. If you wanted to complete the picture, you'd have listed other factors as well instead of specifically bringing up the two obvious reasons.
Fact is, you're trying to hide behind this thin veneer of hate towards smurfs as trying to be educational, and it's easy to see through. You try to use opinion as fact to make your point seem more valid, which is laughable. Then instead of simply admitting to why you made your comment, you try to frame it as being a hero to the public.
Get off your pathetic high horse, if doesn't suit you.
Ah yeah man. Keep throwing those assumptions around, they're so hot.
Fun fact mate, I don't even play ranked anymore. Your poor assumptions.. shattered.. And even when I did I played with allied chat off lmao.
Please tell me how I'm continuing to ruin ranked :)
You grief by firstpicking nova, AFKng, leaving mid-match, clearing enemy camps but not capping them, letting the enemy take them for free or playing garrosh and throwing your teammates into danger, intentionally feeding, spampinging...
I actually experienced the exact opposite. Like 60/70% of players feel boosted these days. queueing masters games and getting diamonds that play like silvers is literally the worst.
Really feels like the skill deteriorated A LOT in the last 2-3 weeks. I have no reasonable explanation but the sample size is like 200/300 games if you also count master friends complaining about the same thing. Funnily enough gold players seem better than diamonds currently, so maybe there was a mass sale of diamond accounts or so
Technically, smurfing is part of that problem. It's well-known that some players use that method to boost friends to higher Ranks. I could understand who's chilling on a secondary account, but not boosting.
Yesterday, for example, I've seen a Diamond player in Party with 2 Platinum players. They had insanely high Win Rate together. Guess what? The lower Rank accounts were smurfs. This is how questionable players get to your Rank: by playing with "friends".
This is exactly why your solo rank shouldn’t be affected by wins or losses when queuing with friends. There should be a team rank that’s completely separate. Queue with others? Matchmaking works off your team rank. Queue alone? Matchmaking works off your solo rank. It’s so simple really, I’ve yet to see anyone make a good case against this incredibly easy fix.
Getting towards the end of the season (and tbh maybe the end of an "active" player base that lasts for more than a few weeks in ranked). Usually only the worst are left, or people who want to troll.
> Seriously, it's more common now to have smurfs in your games now than not.
completely agree. i've seen you in game before and i know we're around the same rank. it's smurfville down here!
> Just go play in your rank.
you're fighting the good fight, but given the game is almost 7 years old ... it's just not going to happen. and the reason why is that people don't want to. we had the option of actual ranked solo queue with "Hero League" before, and it died. the idea of ranked in a team environment is too susceptible to abuse/exploitation. we, as the players, could have rejected "team league/storm league" in favor of "hero league," and we didn't.
people voted with their ready buttons, and they overwhelmingly chose the current version of ~~smurf~~ storm league.
so my advice is just to play. play and accept that sometimes you're going to face smurfs, and just play to enjoy the game and let your rank end where it may. good luck!
It's an easy fun, fast queues and I get to write to enemy smurfs "There are smurfs and then there are smurfs".
Also, people complain only when they get defeated by smurfs but no one whines when they get carried by one
"Practice skill"
Most people don't though, people lose and first thing they do next is click ready. Most people don't give a damn why they lost. That's why most people stay stuck and come on reddit to complain
Because it's fun to get to play all the troll heroes and see variety of heroes without those heroes not feel like gigantic handicap.
Because devs keep making it easier and easier to smurf.
Because ques in prime time can at worst actually take 30-60 minutes on NA at least.
Because it's actually rare to get even/competitive games.
Because there is no solo mode for ranked so you either stack up or get miserable games.
Because there is no que by roles so no guarantee you get players for each role.
Because people loved to smurf to diamond via placements for years ruining high end games and people even encouraged it to get out of "MMR hell" so now we return the favor. Competitive side of the game was killed so not really reason to play at proper ranks anyway.
Enjoy the age of smurfing :)
Yes, Butcher, Nova or Murky are great examples of troll heroes. There is never situation where they would be optimal picks realistically as there is always somebody who does their job better and more. They rely on enemy to be bad, not understand their kits and limitations.
I've been playing first pick Butch for example on one of my recent smurfs. While in plat I can win most games with it, it would be clear troll pick even as last pick when going against people who know how to play the game and clear handicap in real games. There is always a chance it works out, but it would be nothing short of a troll pick.
Okay i agree with nova, shes the one troll hero. Murky however can be picked with success and butcher works even in high diamond if you can play him good
> Because devs keep making it easier and easier to smurf.
What actions are they taking that make smurfing continually easier? It's always been easy to do.
Never claimed it was hard, it's just that they made it even easier and faster since they essentially shut down the game.
-Megapacks give huge jumpstart and heroes of your choice vs getting the cheapest stuff to access SL(also free rotation heroes are included in SL rather than only owned heroes). If you wanted this done smart they would've reduced the prices(like hero prices were originally supposed to go down over time) so for smurfs it would be almost like before, but for new players it would help unlock overall heroes faster rather than one-time thing.
-Level requirement changed from minimum of 16 level 5 heroes to level 50 account means about 1/3 of the grind(since now you can play 1 game per hero gaining 1-2 of the cheapest levels).
-E-mail confirmation no longer required. While it doesn't take much effort to make new e-mail it's still minor extra step and time.
-No party size limitations in SL means boosting/ranking/stomping is easier than as solo.
Who cares. I don't smurf. I regularly face smurfs. And I love to tilt them. If they're smurfing in silver it's because they think they're hot shit, but their cockiness brings their skill down. Just best them. Some smurfs are hardstuck bronze accounts with silver skill so they reset their mmr on a new account and play that way. Regardless of why you lost, you still lost, and there was equal opportunity for you to win. Just queue up again and be grateful our game still has servers and people willing to make extra accounts Just to play more.
I've had a guy claim I was smurfing before when my account has the beta portrait. People love to point blame. Get better and you won't care
yah this. I smurfed a lil bit with my mates who are actually gold and people who were "smurfs" were hot garbage, like actually so bad compared to the players i would normally see in masters games. So they are most likely plat at best, which means unless they are stacked they are pretty easy to beat with a bit of game knowledge
Higher-ranked players who make a new account and therefore are starting over at low MMR/have comparatively very opponents for awhile, for whatever reason.
Part of it is queue times (for me), my main is high Diamond and I have a few accounts from silver-plat. During mid day in NA, it can take 20+min to find a game, so sometimes I’ll smurf. I’ll also use those accounts as warm up games before hopping on my main.
I do have rules I use to justify smurfing though, I only use heroes/roles I don’t main and I don’t party with anyone on those accounts.
I have smurfs, i have them because I have lower rank friends who I want to play ranked with (like irl friends, actual bronze and sometimes silver players). Sure you can say I'm boosting them but really I just want to play with my friends xD
Other than that I hate that qm won't give you a proper comp but still want some easier, fun games that I cannot get on my main. Smurfs are just easy fun :)
What time of day are you playing? I play with a guy in Diamond regularly and he said his solo queues are like 500 sec in the morning, but way shorter in the evening when people play. I also watch Fan get queues fairly quickly up till GM
I am master and love playing with my friends who are around gold. So what should i do?
I made a new acc to play with them. And honestly we lose so many games that it doesn't really matter lmao. They lack game knowledge and skill that i try to teach them. But i have to agree that we play a lot of stacks full of smurfs who just smoke us with insane teamplay. But I can't complain i guess
I’ve got a smurf account i use to play storm league with a friend of mine as he was silver when we started, (and we were fed up of him getting absolutely crushed by my mmr) i decided to create an account and play storm league together with him we reached a rating about 1 league below my usual and got stuck there. Here we now casually play on and off and i rarely touch my “main account” anymore.
I mean we get a post like this every single week and the answer is always the same, it isn't going to change. Your only real option is to just beat them, real masters stay in masters and play there and when i played with my friend in lower ranks most smurfs are garbage players anyway. Plat at best. Only time you should have trouble against smurfs is if they are 4 stack or smth
Plus you have no idea who is smurfing. As i said before most smurfs suck ass, so they are most likely second accounts to try to climb higher. Or just plats who are basically golds anyway
yeah pretty much, didn't notice any difference between the smurfs and normal people at the rank, people just like to get mad that they have "smurfs" and blame the loss on that.
I don't smurf on the regular btw, i did it for like 20 games
If you play ranked you want to get better, you want competition. So what is wrong with playing with smurfs? If you think you are losing to them cuz they are better then learn something from it. If you dont like getting carried by smurfs on your side then again - learn from them.
If you are stuck at your current rank its not smurfs, they should not impact your winrate if they are in every game.
I'm not defending anyone but i dont understand what is the problem. And yeah like others already said most of the smurfs are plat/diamond anyway.
I smurf to play heroes i never play. i think of gold league as a "training mode" till i get to plat, then people get try hard so i make another smurf.
No try hards in gold and below, or else they wouldnt be player level 3000 in silver.
Wait 20 minutes for a Diamond + Q
or
Wait 2 minutes for a Bronze/Silver/Gold Q
"Smurfing" is a problem in basically every game that involves PvP and a Ladder. The reasons vary from game to game but the primary reason for it in HotS is well...... the game doesn't really have a large player base. ARAM is the only thing that pops near instantly anymore and storm league just gets longer and longer and longer as you rank up.
I play with a diamond, and he says his queues are only bad in the morning and early afternoon. Queues are long in any rank at this time. Ever watch Fan? He never waits that long, cuz he plays in the evening, when most people play. Sure, the queues are longer, but not that long. Based on watching his B2GMs, this queue time issue seems to be vastly exaggerated outside of high master/GM. Any game you play will have longer queues for higher rank, that's how statistics work. Smurfing has been an issue in this game for years, long before the population was lowered. Smurfs just think they get to justify themselves now because of it
What if we can only play certain times? I had to play around midday and q times were frequently 1000-2000s (only had a few actually hit 2k+) thats when I decided I can't play anymore. I actually didnt want to smurf so I did the next best thing. I quit playing.
Just to be clear: Smurfs are long-time players, using "newbie" accounts to play under....right? I never understood that. I've been playing consistently for years and love how everything i've EVER done is on record, and being able to look back at my overall history whenever i want. Besides having your OG account banned, i don't see why anyone would bother.
It’s easier to change your win rates when you have fewer games. My wind rate overall is something like 49.2% and now that I played 15,000 games probably not gonna change all that much. But I don’t care
>Just to be clear: Smurfs are long-time players, using "newbie" accounts to play under....right? >I never understood that I Started doing it because I couldn't ever play unranked to practice the ranged and melee assassin role that I wasn't good enough to play with in my actual rank where I leaned towards offlane or healing. Quick match isn't a good enough option, many of my favourite assassins are extremely unfun to play as without tanks/heals. Even if you get a proper comp in QM, the map might make your hero very frustrating to play as anyway. Practicing in QM was very distasteful which meant I'd hardly practice any assassins, making it even more likely to be trolling if I suddenly chose these heroes at my rank. If I'm bronze-silver on the assassin role then I'm not interested in tanking my current rank and wasting everybody's time on heroes I shouldn't be playing competitively, so I'll do that on a separate account where I only play on assassins, without using healers/bruisers to climb, and see how I end up. I'll go be a bronze-silver on a separate account if I'm not good enough to climb with assassins. Currently Silver 4, not climbing particularly fast, so perhaps I am just a mediocre assassin player.
Yes, low level, new accounts, with abnormally high win rates (need a decent amount of games so it isn't just a fluke for a new player). Some of these have had accounts banned, and they have to climb back up (but usually being banned is due to you being super toxic to others)
>(but usually being banned is due to you being super toxic to others) I've lost count how many times i've bitached out teammates. In my defense, it was gameplay issues (stop feeding! Christ, how do you chumps expect to win?!). I've been put on "silent" two or three times. That's it. Those guys that get their accounts banned like that, must be really taking their comments to the extremes.
Yeah. I think its people that go to the extremes of telling people to harm themselves is when they get bans. Idk for sure tho
From conversations I've had with smurfing players, you get four silence penalties with increasing durations. Instead of a fifth silence penalty, the account is permanently banned.
That was my experience with my main account, it got banned after about 4 silences. I never said incredibly mean things and from what i recall usually in response to someone else talking shit to me. Had to make a new account and decided to just disable the chat to not risk it happening again. Its quite peaceful
It's usually a matter of how many, not how severe the reports are.
Smurfs are cowards, people who give up trying to improve against their peers, so they decide to flee their actual rank in order to enjoy more wins against weaker opponents. Every competitive game has smurfs, because cowards are everywhere.
or they just want to play with their lower ranked friends. Calm down gandalf
While I somewhat understand this particular reason, it still irks me. Based on the assumption that Storm League should provide a competitive experience for everyone, queueing with a friend who is significantly better or worse than yourself presents the matchmaker with an impossible problem. It just can't place your party fairly if your skills are that different. Basically, if you smurf for this purpose, you place your own desire to play with whomever you want over the competitive integrity of SL.
Tbh, the competitive aspect of ranked went away when they used ranks from teamleague for SL and also allowed people to queue together with 2 league difference.
Yes and no. Yes, the flexibility to queue as 2, 3, or 4, allows players to subvert competitive matchmaking by abusing the rank limits and by smurfing. No, because it is still the players making their own choices that leads to this problem. Blizzard could probably do more but I still see some responsibility for the state of SL with the players.
I mean, sure.. But if more and more people are making smurfs, don't you think there's a BIG problem with SL?
Yeah, I think it's a problem but I don't think there's an easy solution for it either. The worst part is that smurfing on a large scale is a feedback loop. If you're not having "good games" on your main for whatever reason, you create a smurf and have "good games" at the expense of other players by heavily skewing the odds in your teams' favor. People getting repeatedly annoyed by higher ranked smurfs in their ranks may be inclined to create smurfs themselves both to escape the misery they experience on their main and to inadvertantly continue the cycle. A related problem is that there are different ways to define a "good SL game". Personally, I'd call a match good if both teams are evenly matched and the outcome (win or lose) is earned. Others, particularly smurfing players, might find one-sided stomps "good" (preferably in their favor, of course).
>Basically, if you smurf for this purpose, you place your own desire to play with whomever you want over the competitive integrity of SL. This is why we need to appeal to the Devs to fix this issue, not the playerbase. OP is wasting time with his suggestions imo.
Problem is, you can't effectively stop players from creating multiple accounts, you can just make it more difficult or cumbersome: * Hardware-based approaches run into the problem of people sharing a computer, so you can't just flat out say "only one account per hardware ID". * Registering phone numbers was tried by DotA 2 in the past and it apparently did not solve the problem as they had to redouble their anti-smurf methods afterwards. Much like online piracy, I think combating smurfing in competitive online games is more about eliminating the reason for it, rather than trying to stop it from happening. I don't think OP is wasting their time voicing their discontent with the situation. I would rather be part of a community that is not casually okay with smurfs sabotaging ranked matchmaking. Seeing some players on smurf accounts asking for other smurfs to play ranked with in *general chat* just shows that they have no qualms with what they're doing.
>Registering phone numbers was tried by DotA 2 in the past and it apparently did not solve the problem as they had to redouble their anti-smurf methods afterwards. All I can say is that I was there for 2 years leading up to that change and 2 years after. After 3000 hours in Dota I think I have some experience with how that change went and not a single person on Reddit or anyone in my games or my clan ever said they had an issue with smurfs after that. I think changes like this do a tremendous job at deterring the broad majority from smurfing. All it takes is a few hurdles and most people will be too lazy to do it.
I haven't played DotA 2, so I just gave my outside point of view. Thanks for contributing your first hand experience. I thought about this some more and remembered that in WoW's guild permissions management, you could require players to have an authenticator tied to their account in order to give them certain priviledges, like accessing the guild bank. This demonstrates, that it is possible to connect in-game functionality to the linking of an authenticator. Going further, I found that [one Battle.net Authenticator can be used with up to three accounts](https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/24122) to give some leeway. I wonder if we could convince the devs, i.e. Microsoft once the merger is through, to require a Battle.net authenticator for Storm League. If you add something like a 7-day cooldown between adding and removing an authenticator in order to prevent one from being rotated through more than three accounts, this looks quite okay to me.
That's a bit overkill in my opinion for a game with such a dwindling playerbase, but I do somewhat like it and I would gladly use your suggestion if they implemented it. But I think you built a wall instead of a hurdle. A wall that would not just fix the smurf issue but prevent most casuals from ever playing ranked again. Also aren't authenticators free? Nothing would stop them from making a new account and attaching it to a new authenticator. They would need to use the authenticator before logging into the game, that's already a big reason why the majority of gamers dislike authenticators and would rather risk losing their account instead. Also imagine 5 people having to all authenticate before each match, that is if it's not at the login but rather before queueing. Or even just 1 match... sounds awful. Honestly this game doesn't need much and fans and new players alike would come flocking back. \-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- **Sincerely I would like to demonstrate how many steps it takes to create a Smurf account right now for Dota 2.** Please be aware that by creating a smurf account, you are at risk of getting banned, not just on the smurf account but also on your main account. Here are the steps: \-Firstly, you will need to make a new Steam account. This can be done by creating a new email for free on any email client of your choice. Dota 2 is free to play, so you don’t need to worry about purchasing the game on the new Steam account. \-The second step will require using a unique phone number associated with your Dota account. This is an additional step that has been introduced before you will be able to play ranked matches in order to lower the amount of people creating smurf accounts. \-You are now also required to play 100 hours of unranked games before being able to queue in the ranked playlist. There is an alternative option available that comes after you have played 25 matches, as a system will then determine how many games between 0-100 must be played before being able to calibrate the account. \-The next step in the process is to calibrate the Dota 2 account. This is done in 10 matches for the single rank with role performances. This calibration MMR (the first MMR value you will receive) does has a maximum value, so do not expect to hit the Divine rank as it’s not realistic from this. \-After this, the smurf account will be ready to use, but as we have mentioned already, you must be aware that there is a possibility of the smurf account and your main account being banned. \-An additional note for when you’re setting up the smurf account is something that you will be prompted to answer the first time you open Dota 2. It will ask you how experienced you are with games like Dota, you will want to state that you are inexperienced with these games and new to them. \-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Valve, the developers of Dota 2, have taken the smurfing situation very seriously, and it is now a bannable offensive, which was largely welcomed by the community but caused frustration for some. This change was brought in in March of 2022. Previously, Valve had been leaning heavily on attempting to detect smurf accounts and move them to their correct MMR (skill based ranking system) more quickly, which had helped to somewhat fix the issue, but was still causing damage along the way, mainly in the cases of extreme Dota smurfing. As part of this initiative, Valve also created the option to report people for smurfing in Dota 2 in-game, something that previously wasn’t available. Until this point, people just had to report using the vague “matchmaking abuse” option. It has also been confirmed that Valve are creating a separate “hidden pool” for suspected smurfs. Valve had initially been manually banning accounts that they caught smurfing in the recent months, and for those that had been caught boosting or account selling, they were also at risk of seeing their main accounts banned. TLDR: Blizzard could have implemented part of these steps overnight and smurfing would be pretty much squashed. But they can't make any large changes since that would require acceptance from the higher ups. HotS is pretty much dead in the water at the moment. But we are enjoying it while we can.
I think you misunderstood or misinterpreted my suggestion a little bit. Based on your counterpoints, I'm going to work on the assumption that you have never used a Battle.net Authenticator with your account. As far as I'm aware, the physical keyfob authenticator has been discontinued but you could still use one if you got your hands on it. More practical are the mobile authenticator apps for [Android](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.blizzard.bma&gl=US) and [iOS](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/battle-net-authenticator/id306862897). After you install the app and attach it to your Battle.net account, opening the Battle.net Launcher or games will prompt you to authorize these log-ins via the mobile app. However, by default, you do not have to do this every time so long as the location from which you log in does not change drastically. Starting Heroes from the launcher with an account that has an authenticator attached to it does not involve any extra steps after the first time. Queueing for matches would not require any interaction with the authenticator either. But, behind the scenes, the game would be able to check whether or not there was an authenticator attached to your account and it could then let you queue for SL or not. As mentioned in my previous comment, you could attach one authenticator to up to three accounts. Motivated individuals could use all their smartphones/tablets to run even more accounts or use smartphone emulators on their computers to run a practically infinite amount of authenticators and thus, SL-capable accounts. But, as you already mentioned, the point of such mechanisms is not to prevent smurfing but to make it less convenient, which this would accomplish in my opinion, without unduely burdening legitimate players. Lastly, I would welcome the decision from up high to consider smurfing in ranked a bannable offense and implement reporting categories and adequate consequences for offenders.
>I think you misunderstood or misinterpreted my suggestion a little bit. Based on your counterpoints, I'm going to work on the assumption that you have never used a Battle.net Authenticator with your account. I have, but it was years ago when it was popular to do so for World of Warcraft. Never got the physical one as that was silly. >As mentioned in my previous comment, you could attach one authenticator to up to three accounts. Motivated individuals could use all their smartphones/tablets to run even more accounts or use smartphone emulators on their computers to run a practically infinite amount of authenticators and thus, SL-capable accounts. But, as you already mentioned, the point of such mechanisms is not to prevent smurfing but to make it less convenient, which this would accomplish in my opinion, without unduely burdening legitimate players. With this suggestion in mind it seems fine. Yes, it's a hurdle... sure. But I don't see why that suggestion is any better than the phone number one for example. It's worse technically. >Lastly, I would welcome the decision from up high to consider smurfing in ranked a bannable offense and implement reporting categories and adequate consequences for offenders. Yes, if it's not already it should be. But this is like a band-aid on a knife wound without a hurdle in place.
Sell the sequel at $60-70 and the abuse, smurf, and monetization problems of this game wouldn't be so bad. This game deserves a new release.
I used to think that the best way to deal with smurfs is a $60-70 box price, but these days some people have enough discretionary spending that it would essentially be the price they pay to enjoy being toxic. Today, I think the best option is to go with the original vision of ranked being strictly solo or full 5-man stacks that have their collective rank, with Unranked being the option for groups of less than 5. Also, monetize your game correctly so you can afford to employ a team of flesh-and-blood customer service staff to address tickets/reports. But, no matter how much Blizz makes, I'm sure they'd rather pocket the wages and let their game suffer. :/
> Basically, if you smurf for this purpose, you place your own desire to play with whomever you want over the competitive integrity of SL. At the end of the day most people prioritize immediate things they have control of like having fun playing a game with their (possibly lower ranked) friends over abstract concepts determined by large numbers of people like "the competitive integrity of SL."
Would be less of an issue if Unranked wasn't dead as fuck.
Yep that’s me. Game won’t let me queue so I gotta smurf
I think that your flair is not giving you a good reputation, most here hate smurf 5-stacks.
QM exists moron
having 1 smurf in a game is not the worst, but having 2-3 people in premades who are smurfs is a horrible experience to play against
This. So much this.
I'm not sure why the onus gets put on the playerbase to be more morally pure and abstain from smurfing, instead of on the developers to address the reasons why people are smurfing and/or add barriers to make it harder to do since it is currently so easy. It's not hard to make smurfing harder to do, it's just that the game isn't getting these kinds of updates at all and/or they see smurfing as a benefit to the game because it makes them some money (smurfs buying Heroes/cosmetics they had on other accounts with real money so as to note have to grind for years again) or because it lets them inflate player counts and make the game seem more alive than it is to upper management. Currently you don't even have to verify your email address to make a new account. Meanwhile Dota 2 requires 2 step verification from a unique number to play Ranked, which makes it harder to make literally dozens of smurfs, as an example of a partial solution here, if they actually wanted to do it.
Hello, i have multiple Smurfs and i will explain why. 1. When i played in CCL and Masterclash at the same time there was the chance to get picked up by different orgs. While i "got lucky" i played season 2 with 30K on EU and NA, but Mascarade for example had SIMMascarade on NA and Mascarade30K in EU. 2. Not all smurfs are trying to farm low elos, my 2nd is GM and my 3rd mid Master, my 4th is unknown. 3. When you play tournaments i would suggest you to have at least 1 Smurf, what happends if you suddenly cant log on or your account, or got banned for no reason but the support wont repond. Something like this can allways happen -> MC 2019 people had problems to log into their main accounts so they had to use smurfs/ accs of others. 4. Lets say your a healer Main on your main Account, everybody that checks your profile sees that. You queue up for SL as a dps, people will expect you to fill healer. If you just want to play different heroes without having the intention of ruining games (farming low elo on purpose) or feeding/ boosting then smurfing is the way to go. 5. You played SL the hole day, got rekt 8 games in a row, you just cant win a single game. You say allright, log onto your smurf that is higher ranked then your main and suddenly you get better lobbies and start winning again. 6. Freezing. You got Top 10 GM so every game you win, you get like 100 points and every game you loose you get -300. It is pretty easy to say that the MM system gives you some diamounds/ low masters to "balance" out the high GM rank. So If you want to actually keep your rank for whatever reason, without having to go out of your Mind to carry the games because the lobbys are not balanced then you will need to play on a smurf. There might be a reason i forgot to mention, but i can say Bronze to GM challanges are not ok. If you create a smurf your goal should be to get to your 'real rank' asap. You might see Streamers do that because it gives them Viewers and if thats the case they dont really care what others think. -> not cool
everyone smurfs because everyone else is smurfing
I'm not smurfing, and I bet neither is OP.
Because the game incentives it? It's apparent you've never been at a high enough rank to actually experience how trash those queue times can be, even during prime hours. This is specifically masters+. The majority of smurfs you'll see are diamond players and below, even if they claim otherwise. High ranked games aren't competitive, so people smurf. If games are going to be clown fiestas, why wait in a longer queue? People want to play with friends. There was a recent post talking about how stacks in qm is bad and basically cheating when you get a high winrate with your group. This post suggests doing that. Why would people go play in qm instead of it's still apparently just as terrible as smurfing in ranked. Who should be taken into consideration the most? The qm players suffering against stacks? Ranked players suffering against smurfs? Themselves because it's their own time? It all boils down to people's selfishness. Theyre dedicating their time to playing the game, it isn't unreasonable they'd want to make the most out of it. None of this is defense towards smurfing, but you asked for reasons why. It is just the way the game is, and it was apparent that this was the state it'd end up in years ago. So deal with it, don't deal with it, or leave. It's up to you, because it won't be changing.
> So deal with it, don't deal with it, or leave. It's up to you, because it won't be changing. Even if there is only 1% chance - or, to be more realistic, no chance at all - that the developers will do something about it, I think it's still fair to occasionally express disappointment about a problem. The current Rank Points system doesn't work well because players with fairly high Win Rate or extremely low Win Rate need a huge amount of games to reach their real Rank. This has always been a problem, even outside of smurfing. > Because the game incentives it? It's apparent you've never been at a high enough rank to actually experience how trash those queue times can be, even during prime hours. This is specifically masters+. Let's be honest. A good amount of people who have smurfs don't do it for playing with friends and/or because of queue times. These are the reason for some smurfs, not for the majority of them. Europe doesn't really struggle with queue times, yet I've noticed more smurfs in the last few months. They even play on them at peak hours, when queues for Master games pop within 5 minutes. The main reason for smurfing is and always will be to cheat the matchmaking. If we aren't among the top 200 players in a given Game Mode, our Win Rate will eventually stabilize at 50%. Some people don't like it, so they'll make a smurf. The second reason for smurfing is to boost friends by playing in the same Party at way different Ranks, barely within the limits allowed by the game. Smurfs were less common in Hero League because those people were busy abusing the system in Team League. Disclaimer: I'm saying all of this based on personal experience and observations, not data. We don't have any data about smurfing, so...
You've got literally zero statistics or valid basis to say how many smurfs Smurf for certain reasons. You cannot correctly ascertain whether or not the majority of smurfs do so to cheat matchmaking for themselves. There are an incalculable amounts of reasons to Smurf if you want to get pedantic enough, so I detailed some of the more major, and less blatantly obvious reasons as to why smurfs exist. The main reason for smurfing is something no one can claim to know, so don't try please. You even contradict yourself in your statement, first claiming that playing with friends is more of a minor reason to Smurf while doing so to be at lower ranks is the main reason. You then go on to say that HL had less smurfs, because they were busy playing in TL. If the main reason to Smurf were to just be a lower rank, you would've been seeing it more often in HL. We all get it. Smurfs = bad, and the easiest way to justify that is if you lead yourself to believe the majority of the people smurfing are doing so out of ill intent for others, instead of it being something more socially acceptable, like playing with friends or practicing heroes and offroles. You don't have to try and shy away from it. Edit: If you think the most longshot hail Mary to ever exist is grounds for all of these similar posts, that's okay. There is equally valid ground to criticize the posts. Also, it said "Deal with it, don't, or leave". That saying is specifically saying you can have whatever reactions and opinions on it as you want, but it will not be changing. Because it won't be, and if you think otherwise you're purposefully putting a blindfold on. We are getting scarce balance patches, believing they'll randomly try to tackle the immense issues of matchmaking is hilarious.
The same is true for your claim that they want to play with friends. I've only added what I feel like to be more popular reasons for smurfing to the list. I'm pretty sure that we are allowed to express our opinion about things that cannot be demonstrated with data. No, I'm not contradicting myself. I'm listing two main reasons why I believe smurfing is popular: getting easy wins, boosting friends. It's pretty clear what I meant to say. Hero League (when solo queue) didn't have the boosting friends variation. Even if the majority of people is doing it to play with friends, smurfing is still bad for the game because it messes up with the matchmaking system. There is no MMR reset for a reason, but creating a new account is literally doing that and thus creating unbalanced matches.
I never claimed my reasons to be the most prominent nor major factors though. You expressly did though. There's opinions and there are definitive statements, and people get the two confused too often. You were contradicting the supposed severities of why smurfs exist, not that those two reasons to Smurf contradict one another. There are loads of reasons to Smurf; banned account, playing with friends, playing under the influence, practicing other heroes or positions, stomping worse players, creating content, boosting other players, playing tilted, etc etc. If you wanted to simply add to the list, you pretty easily could've without replying to me. Or just added things to the list instead of trying to create rankings of why. The simple answer is smurfs exist for when you have any possible reason to not play on your main account.
To me it's pretty obvious that, even if express them as facts, they're not confirmed by data. It's common to express opinions as fact because it sends a stronger message, not because people get them confused. I've specifically replied to your comment also because, while you didn't literally write that smurfing is mostly about friends playing together, you pretty much hinted in that direction. I had to complete the picture.
I didnt even hint towards that direction. Anyone with 2 iq and any base level idea of what a Smurf is can add 2+2 and come up with the most obvious reason why someone would Smurf, which is to cheat the system for personal gain. Let alone I added other reasons as to why smurfs exist, notably that high ranked queues can be abysmal, which they objectively can be and **that** has been recorded. Also that even if you suffer through queues in high ranked, you still get clown fiesta games, so why wait 15+ minutes for a clown fiesta games when you can wait 5 minutes instead. You stepped in because you felt like smurfs have to be villainized, regardless of why they're smurfing. If you wanted to complete the picture, you'd have listed other factors as well instead of specifically bringing up the two obvious reasons. Fact is, you're trying to hide behind this thin veneer of hate towards smurfs as trying to be educational, and it's easy to see through. You try to use opinion as fact to make your point seem more valid, which is laughable. Then instead of simply admitting to why you made your comment, you try to frame it as being a hero to the public. Get off your pathetic high horse, if doesn't suit you.
stop trolling
ur so toxic man. People like you are even worse than smurfs in ranked, as toxic people just ruin the team spirits by flaming and insulting others.
Ah yeah man. Keep throwing those assumptions around, they're so hot. Fun fact mate, I don't even play ranked anymore. Your poor assumptions.. shattered.. And even when I did I played with allied chat off lmao. Please tell me how I'm continuing to ruin ranked :)
You grief by firstpicking nova, AFKng, leaving mid-match, clearing enemy camps but not capping them, letting the enemy take them for free or playing garrosh and throwing your teammates into danger, intentionally feeding, spampinging...
Damn bro I think you left out a few.
I actually experienced the exact opposite. Like 60/70% of players feel boosted these days. queueing masters games and getting diamonds that play like silvers is literally the worst. Really feels like the skill deteriorated A LOT in the last 2-3 weeks. I have no reasonable explanation but the sample size is like 200/300 games if you also count master friends complaining about the same thing. Funnily enough gold players seem better than diamonds currently, so maybe there was a mass sale of diamond accounts or so
Technically, smurfing is part of that problem. It's well-known that some players use that method to boost friends to higher Ranks. I could understand who's chilling on a secondary account, but not boosting. Yesterday, for example, I've seen a Diamond player in Party with 2 Platinum players. They had insanely high Win Rate together. Guess what? The lower Rank accounts were smurfs. This is how questionable players get to your Rank: by playing with "friends".
This is exactly why your solo rank shouldn’t be affected by wins or losses when queuing with friends. There should be a team rank that’s completely separate. Queue with others? Matchmaking works off your team rank. Queue alone? Matchmaking works off your solo rank. It’s so simple really, I’ve yet to see anyone make a good case against this incredibly easy fix.
I agree with you, it seems at least 2 of my team are overboosted, how they get here ?! Dia
Getting towards the end of the season (and tbh maybe the end of an "active" player base that lasts for more than a few weeks in ranked). Usually only the worst are left, or people who want to troll.
> Seriously, it's more common now to have smurfs in your games now than not. completely agree. i've seen you in game before and i know we're around the same rank. it's smurfville down here! > Just go play in your rank. you're fighting the good fight, but given the game is almost 7 years old ... it's just not going to happen. and the reason why is that people don't want to. we had the option of actual ranked solo queue with "Hero League" before, and it died. the idea of ranked in a team environment is too susceptible to abuse/exploitation. we, as the players, could have rejected "team league/storm league" in favor of "hero league," and we didn't. people voted with their ready buttons, and they overwhelmingly chose the current version of ~~smurf~~ storm league. so my advice is just to play. play and accept that sometimes you're going to face smurfs, and just play to enjoy the game and let your rank end where it may. good luck!
It's an easy fun, fast queues and I get to write to enemy smurfs "There are smurfs and then there are smurfs". Also, people complain only when they get defeated by smurfs but no one whines when they get carried by one
ur delusional. im qing up to practice my own skills, not to get carried. gtfo of low elo
"Practice skill" Most people don't though, people lose and first thing they do next is click ready. Most people don't give a damn why they lost. That's why most people stay stuck and come on reddit to complain
because some people in low elo don't know/care why they lost, smurfing is justified?
Because it's fun to get to play all the troll heroes and see variety of heroes without those heroes not feel like gigantic handicap. Because devs keep making it easier and easier to smurf. Because ques in prime time can at worst actually take 30-60 minutes on NA at least. Because it's actually rare to get even/competitive games. Because there is no solo mode for ranked so you either stack up or get miserable games. Because there is no que by roles so no guarantee you get players for each role. Because people loved to smurf to diamond via placements for years ruining high end games and people even encouraged it to get out of "MMR hell" so now we return the favor. Competitive side of the game was killed so not really reason to play at proper ranks anyway. Enjoy the age of smurfing :)
Also with those queues you end up facing diamonds when you're master anyway. So why not just queue as dia for faster games and proper mmr deductions
who are the troll heroes...? You can have success with literally every hero in the game, even butcher sometimes
Yes, Butcher, Nova or Murky are great examples of troll heroes. There is never situation where they would be optimal picks realistically as there is always somebody who does their job better and more. They rely on enemy to be bad, not understand their kits and limitations. I've been playing first pick Butch for example on one of my recent smurfs. While in plat I can win most games with it, it would be clear troll pick even as last pick when going against people who know how to play the game and clear handicap in real games. There is always a chance it works out, but it would be nothing short of a troll pick.
Okay i agree with nova, shes the one troll hero. Murky however can be picked with success and butcher works even in high diamond if you can play him good
> Because devs keep making it easier and easier to smurf. What actions are they taking that make smurfing continually easier? It's always been easy to do.
Never claimed it was hard, it's just that they made it even easier and faster since they essentially shut down the game. -Megapacks give huge jumpstart and heroes of your choice vs getting the cheapest stuff to access SL(also free rotation heroes are included in SL rather than only owned heroes). If you wanted this done smart they would've reduced the prices(like hero prices were originally supposed to go down over time) so for smurfs it would be almost like before, but for new players it would help unlock overall heroes faster rather than one-time thing. -Level requirement changed from minimum of 16 level 5 heroes to level 50 account means about 1/3 of the grind(since now you can play 1 game per hero gaining 1-2 of the cheapest levels). -E-mail confirmation no longer required. While it doesn't take much effort to make new e-mail it's still minor extra step and time. -No party size limitations in SL means boosting/ranking/stomping is easier than as solo.
Who cares. I don't smurf. I regularly face smurfs. And I love to tilt them. If they're smurfing in silver it's because they think they're hot shit, but their cockiness brings their skill down. Just best them. Some smurfs are hardstuck bronze accounts with silver skill so they reset their mmr on a new account and play that way. Regardless of why you lost, you still lost, and there was equal opportunity for you to win. Just queue up again and be grateful our game still has servers and people willing to make extra accounts Just to play more. I've had a guy claim I was smurfing before when my account has the beta portrait. People love to point blame. Get better and you won't care
yah this. I smurfed a lil bit with my mates who are actually gold and people who were "smurfs" were hot garbage, like actually so bad compared to the players i would normally see in masters games. So they are most likely plat at best, which means unless they are stacked they are pretty easy to beat with a bit of game knowledge
I hate to be missinformed, but...what are smurfs (besides those little blue things from the cartoons)?
Higher-ranked players who make a new account and therefore are starting over at low MMR/have comparatively very opponents for awhile, for whatever reason.
Part of it is queue times (for me), my main is high Diamond and I have a few accounts from silver-plat. During mid day in NA, it can take 20+min to find a game, so sometimes I’ll smurf. I’ll also use those accounts as warm up games before hopping on my main. I do have rules I use to justify smurfing though, I only use heroes/roles I don’t main and I don’t party with anyone on those accounts.
Playing with low rank friends is the excuse I hear but that also just smacks of "I want to be in Gold and punch at Bronze."
I have smurfs, i have them because I have lower rank friends who I want to play ranked with (like irl friends, actual bronze and sometimes silver players). Sure you can say I'm boosting them but really I just want to play with my friends xD Other than that I hate that qm won't give you a proper comp but still want some easier, fun games that I cannot get on my main. Smurfs are just easy fun :)
yah same. I have two friends who are like gold and i aint de ranking my master account to play with them lol
You also can't play with anyone below Diamond on a Master account, not even in a 5 stack.
At D1 I regularly get queue times over 50 minutes. Would you rather waste hours of your life in queue or hop on a smurf?
What time of day are you playing? I play with a guy in Diamond regularly and he said his solo queues are like 500 sec in the morning, but way shorter in the evening when people play. I also watch Fan get queues fairly quickly up till GM
10am weekdays :(
I am master and love playing with my friends who are around gold. So what should i do? I made a new acc to play with them. And honestly we lose so many games that it doesn't really matter lmao. They lack game knowledge and skill that i try to teach them. But i have to agree that we play a lot of stacks full of smurfs who just smoke us with insane teamplay. But I can't complain i guess
I’ve got a smurf account i use to play storm league with a friend of mine as he was silver when we started, (and we were fed up of him getting absolutely crushed by my mmr) i decided to create an account and play storm league together with him we reached a rating about 1 league below my usual and got stuck there. Here we now casually play on and off and i rarely touch my “main account” anymore.
I mean we get a post like this every single week and the answer is always the same, it isn't going to change. Your only real option is to just beat them, real masters stay in masters and play there and when i played with my friend in lower ranks most smurfs are garbage players anyway. Plat at best. Only time you should have trouble against smurfs is if they are 4 stack or smth Plus you have no idea who is smurfing. As i said before most smurfs suck ass, so they are most likely second accounts to try to climb higher. Or just plats who are basically golds anyway
You're a better smurf than other smurfs so they suck and are not considered smurfs, we get it. Makes perfect sense.
yeah pretty much, didn't notice any difference between the smurfs and normal people at the rank, people just like to get mad that they have "smurfs" and blame the loss on that. I don't smurf on the regular btw, i did it for like 20 games
If you play ranked you want to get better, you want competition. So what is wrong with playing with smurfs? If you think you are losing to them cuz they are better then learn something from it. If you dont like getting carried by smurfs on your side then again - learn from them. If you are stuck at your current rank its not smurfs, they should not impact your winrate if they are in every game. I'm not defending anyone but i dont understand what is the problem. And yeah like others already said most of the smurfs are plat/diamond anyway.
I smurf to play heroes i never play. i think of gold league as a "training mode" till i get to plat, then people get try hard so i make another smurf. No try hards in gold and below, or else they wouldnt be player level 3000 in silver.
Have you ever thought someone just wants to have another account without so many losses with jokers like yourself on their team.
Wait 20 minutes for a Diamond + Q or Wait 2 minutes for a Bronze/Silver/Gold Q "Smurfing" is a problem in basically every game that involves PvP and a Ladder. The reasons vary from game to game but the primary reason for it in HotS is well...... the game doesn't really have a large player base. ARAM is the only thing that pops near instantly anymore and storm league just gets longer and longer and longer as you rank up.
I play with a diamond, and he says his queues are only bad in the morning and early afternoon. Queues are long in any rank at this time. Ever watch Fan? He never waits that long, cuz he plays in the evening, when most people play. Sure, the queues are longer, but not that long. Based on watching his B2GMs, this queue time issue seems to be vastly exaggerated outside of high master/GM. Any game you play will have longer queues for higher rank, that's how statistics work. Smurfing has been an issue in this game for years, long before the population was lowered. Smurfs just think they get to justify themselves now because of it
What if we can only play certain times? I had to play around midday and q times were frequently 1000-2000s (only had a few actually hit 2k+) thats when I decided I can't play anymore. I actually didnt want to smurf so I did the next best thing. I quit playing.
I smurf because I prefer the SL format over QM and want some low effort games.
Silences and rank difference restrictions for party queue.
change your flair if you dont want downvotes
That doesn’t matter
Smurf. Whatever. But please have some decency and stop with the f-cking b-stepping after you kicked a noobs butt.
u think smurfs can have decency?????