Posted in: Games, Video Games | Tagged: blizzard, overwatch, smurfing

Don't Like Smurfing In 'Overwatch'? Kaplan Seems To Think The System Is Fine.

Published Wed, 12 Apr 2017 12:45:20 -0500

Smurfing has been an issue with Overwatch since just a couple months after the game was released. If you're not familiar with the term, it's when a high-level player starts a new account and pulverizes lower-ranked players so they can gloat about it. To a lesser extent, when Seasons 2-4 started, high-ranked players would lose all ten of their ranking matches on purpose so they start very low on the ranking scale and work their way up the ranks quickly to earn a lot of experience and easy rank points. This system sucks, and I speak from experience being on both ends of a team who won and lost with Smurfers around. Only one person truly has fun in those games: the troll who decided to go smurfing.

The issue has been brought up to Blizzard so many times on their forums that game director Jeff Kaplan decided to finally address it. And while he was more than happy to say they were going after people who do Boosting (having a high-skilled player carry a low-skilled player to easy victories), Smurfing really isn't a priority for them.

Smurfing — and I know this isn't what you want to hear — isn't really that big of an issue. 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. I know there is a very bad perception of Smurfing. But the reality is, skilled players are moved rapidly out of lower skill situations.

In other words, they're aware of it, but they feel the system is just fine the way it is and it will catch those dirty smurfers eventually. But let's be honest, if you've ever been in a game where someone was smurfing, resulting in a loss of points and a basic waste of your time even playing, you'd want results too. Until the day comes they decide to change the system up, the best you can do is report people and continue voicing your concerns until they finally devise a system against it.

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