Overwatch 2’s lead meta designer, Scott Mercer, and senior software engineer, Morgan Maddren, have openly discussed the difficulty of fair matchmaking and have asked players not to smurf.
In a recent Twitch stream where the team discussed the release of its One Punch Man collaboration event, Mercer and Maddren spoke about how smurfing in Overwatch 2 is one of the hardest problems for the team to tackle (via PCGamer) with Maddren saying, “To be clear: please don’t do that.”
“The situation we don’t want is like, ‘Hi, I’m a new player to Overwatch,’ and we totally misevaluate your skill and you lose a bunch of games because we think you’re way better than you are,” Mercer said.
Both developers went on to explain how smurfing especially ruins the experience of new players because of the game’s skill tier system. When higher ranked players smurf on new accounts, they dramatically impact the matchmaking for lower-ranked and new players.
To overcome this ongoing problem, systems were built to anticipate new and returning players, as well as players who are a higher skill level than others. The developers explained that because new accounts have so little information, the matchmaker designed to evaluate players is affected by smurfs.
“One thing that’s like the bane of my existence is when people do unranked to GM, like they make a fresh account and play to GM,” Maddren said.
Overwatch 2’s One Punch Man is finally here and will run until April 7. In this event, players will be able to complete challenges and earn skins inspired by the hit anime series, such as Saitama’s outfit for Doomfist, Mumen Rider for Soldier: 76, and more.
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