Blizzard has provided a significant amount of additional information explaining the work it is taking to fight the problem of smurfs and toxic players in Overwatch 2 while keeping its commitment to providing new players with a frictionless onramp to the game.
These Precautions Include The Following:
The majority of the changes that were made were, in my opinion, very appropriate, which is in line with my general sense of the situation.
It would appear that the strategy that is used to onboard new players is an effective way to gradually introduce them to the mayhem in a way that is not too overwhelming for them.
The necessity that you tie a cell phone number to your Battle.net account, on the other hand, can be a source of aggravation for some players, particularly those gamers who have several different Battle.net accounts for a variety of reasons.
You are going to need to devise a strategy for how you are going to get a new phone number for you to be able to use any of the other accounts.
Blizzard has said that the company will not acknowledge any phone numbers that are pre-paid or VOIP. This policy applies to all phone numbers.
There is a possibility that you have a member of your family or a roommate who would be happy to lend a helping hand and provide you with their contact information if you asked for it.
If you don’t do this, you run the risk of losing the ability to transfer the cosmetics, progress, and accomplishments from your secondary accounts to your main account, in addition to losing the ability to transfer Overwatch League tokens across accounts.
During my conversation with the developers of Overwatch about the Defense Matrix initiative, one of the questions that I posed to them was whether or not there was a way to integrate the Defense Matrix components of multiple accounts that were hosted on the same platform.
This was one of the questions that I posed to them (say, from one PC account to another).
Account unification or account merging is not yet an option for players that have several Overwatch 2 accounts, as stated by Bill Warnecke, who is the lead software engineer for the Overwatch 2 game.
According to his explanation, “as of the right moment,” there is “neither account unification nor account merging across numerous accounts.”
The fact that this is the case is not surprising in light of everything else we have discovered regarding account merging; yet, for those individuals who are only now becoming aware of the significance of a phone number, it may come as something of an unpleasant shock.
Despite this, the developers provided an explanation that was extremely plausible for their decision to make the change.
Historically, new customers had to “invest” money, or “pay the box price” as Warnecke put it before they could create an account. To access their money, one must have “invested” into an account.
The initial box price of Overwatch 2 was scrapped because the game will eventually be made available for free. SMS Protect is based on the idea of investing client funds in ways that are most beneficial to them while restricting their access to those funds. There is no space for error in this procedure.
It’s hardly shocking that some gamers use many identities. If the gap wasn’t patched, the security of the system and the benefits of deploying SMS Protect internationally would be compromised.
The developers of Overwatch did the math to see how SMS Protect might affect players that use multiple accounts while maintaining balance. They were also aware of the need to safeguard themselves against online bullies and cheaters.
Those who are dishonest in their actions or gameplay and are willing to cheat or even switch between multiple accounts are the ones that SMS Protect is designed to stop.
Based on the fingerprints we acquire, we actively seek out and identify gamers who display gaming anomalies, who stand out in terms of gameplay behavior, or who have cheat fingerprints.
However, even the most sophisticated detection system will be rendered useless if a banned user can just create a new account and continue playing.
Players that repeatedly cheat ought to be penalized more severely. The consequences of losing an account in Overwatch 2 are much more severe than they were in the first game.
