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High-Elo Players in Low-Elo Smurfs

Ban Fiddle·9/24/2018, 8:56:16 PM·1 votes·1,474 views

This is a topic that is consistently brought up in the forums I've noticed. And there's a lot of good reason behind it.

In ranked, you expect to go against players with your relative skill level. If you're Bronze V, you expect to go against Bronze V. If you're Diamond I, you expect to be against Diamond I. But in the former, you'll see a lot of smurfs just in the game to have an easier time playing or to mess around. I just got out of my Silver V promos, and the last game was lost because of a smurf. They openly admitted to smurfing and said they were duo boosting (which is another discussion, but apparently that is allowed also). So in that Silver V game, we have a higher elo player, with their higher skill level, going against the lower elo players who really can't do anything against them.

High-Elo players on the Low-Elo smurfs are damaging to the ranked effects on the game. Yes, if we had been better we might have beaten that smurf, but that's not the point, we were supposed to be playing against Silver V not Diamond. Our skill level was put into a drastically different matchup, and there was no way we could win against that. This IS a problem in the game, and while you can't stop all smurfs because seriously its understandable someone wants a second account, Riot should have a way of protecting Low-Elo players from this. It breaks the ranking system and is just unhealthy for progression in the game.

In my previous example the smurf very literally sent us all a link at the end of the game and said "stop qqing and buy the boost". So we have all the evidence we need, there's no way this guy isn't a smurf booster. It should have been as easy as that. But no. For some reason this is allowed. And this is a very real problem whether people want to admit it or not.

4 Comments

Gall9/24/2018, 9:21:44 PM1 votes

I thought there was a system already in play, because when I got out of my promo games on this account I was placed in Gold 4 with an mmr around gold 1/ plat 5. These guys must've hid their IP (if that's a thing that needs doing) or they must've intentionally bombed a ton of games and lost all their promo games on purpose.

Ban Fiddle10/9/2018, 3:31:54 PM1 votes

Here's my idea on how to solve this:

Whereas you can't just ban a suspicious player of being a smurf, you can try to catch them in the act. In my case the smurf LITERALLY told us he was a smurf and was duo boosting, gave us a link to prove it and that was it. If you could take that evidence and hand it to Riot, it could just be some made up banter by the player flexing on the players he just beat. So they put a mark on his account, maybe even warn him. The second or third time they get this report, they'll take action and not ban the account, but just keep him from playing ranked for a few weeks, if it happens again, a few months, then again a year maybe. Honestly smurfs in norms isn't a problem. Whatever. Happens. But when they are actively effecting the ranking ladder by boosting a player through his ranks, it's not something Riot should just be saying "whatever" to.

And again, if it's just a player who has a smurf account but is actively trying to climb the ladder, that's different as well. You don't want to ban a player for simply making another account and trying to climb to where his main is. It's just when they are only on that smurf to slam on lower elo players you have to start caring.