Smurfing, Coaching, and bans create a demand for hacked accounts: Some thoughts
Hey, So I come from a background in WoW, in which there was a black market on gold which lead to people actually hacking accounts to get at said gold to sell it.
Within league we have a similar issue, there is a different black market item. It's not gold but is instead accounts
Full leveled accounts with content.
Now the account buying process is something we don't talk much about here on league because frankly I don't endorse it or want to give people any hints. But essentially what happens is the following.
Accounts are either made to be levelled by bots, usually in TT and Aram, until they hit a sufficient level. This has dropped down in frequency due to the blue essence changes.
Accounts are Sold by players who are leaving, this is arguably the least immoral issue, with the only negative repurcussions having to do with MMR and Rank remaining the same.
Accounts are stolen, usually with phished passwords but occasionally with actual hacks. and are then stolen.
Ok, so these accounts are sold for anywhere in the $20 to $1,000+ range depending on rank, ban strikes, and unlocked content.
so what happens here?
well there are a few issues. Ban evasion and smurfing however are the more common reasons to buy accounts, with skin collecting being the only real other reason to buy these accounts (And yes there's a market)
by the rules of supply and demand. If there is a demand for something, there will always be someone who finds a way to supply said something if it makes enough economic sense.
My proposals are here to metaphorically remove the value of Hacking accounts of innocent players.
How?
Well we have to look at the three groups
Group 1 is smurfs: this is simple, many smurfs want to play with either one role (So the new ranked system for s9 might actually fix that) or play with just one champion. My proposal is to make a 1trick ranked mode, you lock in your champion, maybe a ban or two, and then generally go into a screen where you see your team and opposing team, no team comp preparations just a chance to set your runes and sums to stand a chance. This makes the OTP accounts essentially part of the primary account of the player
Group 2: Ban evasion. This is three separate groups, we have those who boost others, cheaters and those who get boosted, and finally the toxic personalities. in order to deal with these I would do the following.
Allow for a sort of off the books coaching mode, allows players to enter into whatever contract they want with a coach, provide reviews, that coach can accrew some money and riot can take 5%. By legitimizing coaching you provide boosters with a legal alternative with less risk. Coach accounts would not be allowed to play ranked with anyone they're coaching, but they would have special options for pings and graphics. Coaches would have the ability to watch a player in a coach mode and tell that player how they could react. A simply drawing tool, voice chat, and 1 on 1 pinging will allow a coach to give advice, Pings like "ward here" or "attack now" etc.
As for cheaters and the boosted? Well the boosted are a subset of cheaters imho, but, they could be addressed by letting players who deal with the coaching system go into 'coach games' in which coaches and their students are placed opposing eachother, they all get stomped and learn something.
The toxic though? I think rehabilitation approach might be better. Riot has said usually those who get banned don't come back but I struggle to see how they know this since account creation is mostly anonymous to the point of if it were even possible to track it would be extremely difficult. I think the honor system is a good start, but I think things like long term troll island placement where you could only leave by getting your honor level up (Honor level -1) Put these players in a small pool, fuck their wait times make them wait, give them troll island. In addition we would want something for the other type of trolls, maybe a mutation on custom mode. Give us some sort of map editing tools to make custom game modes so that "Touchdowns" or "Bard chime challenge" are actually something they can lock into. Many trolls are guilty of sabotaging your game simply to play their own.
Group 3. Skin collectors? Ok hear me out, let us trade our orange essence and skin shards with eachother, that way only the super rare skins would be off limits. Let us assign values, maybe I have a striker lucian shard and I want to trade it, I'd put it in an auction house, list skin shards i'd be willing to trade it for, and the amount of orange essence i want alongside that. possibly allow a dollar amount on top of this, but only because i predict the value of skins to be pretty low. this would only be available with legacy content skins. Full skins for trade should never be available because it would create an incentive to hack accounts with skins.
Following all of this, the need for alts should be deterred by incentive. Allow players to get Achievements in three ways
Role specific (Support/adc/etc) Lane specific (Take top turret first, secure x kills while roaming from mid etc) and champion specific (Get a penta on vayne with no assists, hook x champions under your tower on blitz etc)
Allow honorific titles based on these lanes, roles, and champions. Unlock higher mastery levels for champ achievements, and finally put out custom icons or borders for them.
Titles? WTF? how would they work? Titles would show up on your profile page, and over your character after your name, Though in chat it might not be a great thing.
How about custom champ announcers that you unlock and your actions in a game are announced by your champ if mastered? Imagine a graves voice saying "Triple kill" because the graves otp with a graves icon and graves wards has his announcer unlocked due to being dedicated.
Finally I'd say a full mastered champ should get a special skin for that champ, something unique, not quite a legendary but at least on an epic level. with chromas of course unlocked by 'prestige' masteries. I put a lot of thought into this, please don't hate, but feel free to debate [slayer-jinx-catface]
Clarifications
How does Coaching create a demand for hacked accounts?
Yes, but many (Not all) coaches are also boosters. sorry to mix the two but I thought I was clear. The idea is that boosters, or those who use their high levels of play to raise the elo of a lower tier player, get banned when they could probably be good coaches . these players also have a demand for smurfs because they need to get many people ranked up
