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The Player Learning Curve is D.E.A.D

Awnold··51 votes·5,095 views

Smurfs are absolutely obnoxious, we all know this. When you are a new player, you are supposed to face new players in matchmaking, and not diamond leveled smurfs that will crush and destroy every single chance you have to win the game. It is obnoxious really, what these smurfs do harm what happens to them in ranked if they are bronze or silver.

Let's put this to my perspective - why are smurfs bad? Smurfs ruin the game for new players, letting new players not get a grip on the game and overall be bad. Games are played to be fun, that is the whole point of how League Of Legends started correct? Now, when you take away a player's fun, its basically being forced to do math homework all day. This kind of behavior from smurfs ALSO effect the new players to come, why is that? It's because when new players go to ranked, they will be undeveloped in the league of legends learning curve and blatantly fail. Now, you may be thinking this - but level 30 is really far, and theoretically I doubt they will STILL be bad by level 30. They probably won't be bad, but they had a bad start. This means that now new players can't adapt and will forcefully quit out of the game, but the players that still play but are still bad will stick in until they reach level 30 and won't be comparable to the players we have.

Bad Effects of Smurfing - Worse Players

Now lets do another effect of smurfing. Influence Points are a HUGE point in the game, trust me. However, when you keep losing and LOSING AND LOSING you don't get any new champions. What does this cause? An inbalance of champion pools that players can play all because of one's decision of deciding to smurf. Thats like playing an MMORPG with no items! If you keep losing and losing, you'll never get any IP.

Another bad effect of Smurfing - No good champions to get now, low amount of IP.

Riot, this is my final reason. You lose money if you don't fix this - people DON'T BUY STUFF IF THEY DON'T ENJOY YOUR GAME. It's logic - you won't buy something that you hate don't you? If you can fix this, new players will be interested in the game - and you get the $$$.

This impacts all players in some way or another and has to be fixed. Riot, I know you are busy and all of that - but this is one of the most MAJOR parts of the game. You can't have a good game without good players.

Thank you for reading this, I hope you understand my reasons and agree with me.

79 Comments

BetaDude406 votes

Is there a way to fix this though? I'd be interested to know if there was

Thunder Dreamss18 votes

There are ways to mitigate some of it. Think about the reasons people smurf.

First we have people like myself who smurf when they have a friend who's new to the game. I would prefer is I had an option "smurf game" so I could use my main to play a game with no runes/masteries where my Elo is counted as the same as my newb friend.

Second we have high Elo players who makes smurfs to get into games with shorter queue times. If these players had the option to just spawn new lvl 30 accounts they wouldn't need to play through levels 1 - 29 ruining games for actual new players.

Third we have players who's main have been banned. These players are toxic and spew their vitriol on new players as they level new accounts before they can be banned again. Riot's said they will never do it but a prisoner's island would let these players keep playing with their "own kind" and reduce the number of them wanting to put in the effort to start new accounts from scratch.

If Riot did all of this you'd get rid of a fair number of smurfs and reduce the difficulty new players suffer with them. In particular you'd get rid of the super good diamond smurfs and the super toxic "my main was banned" smurfs which are probably the worse two for new players.

Agent Gil3 votes

I fall into the first category. I rarely ever hop on my lower level smurf unless I have a new friend that wants to learn the game. Even then, I wish I didn't always have to play on it because I understand the implications of having someone of a higher skill level in a "new player elo".

It's also frustrating to see other smurfs on the other team (especially ones that solo Queue, just to "Own noobs" --- because they couldn't make it in their own division). In my opinion, these guys are the worst type of players. I've met tons of people who have multiple smurf accounts, just "because".

Ultimately, I agree that there should be some type of "Smurf Game" option. However it's formatted, I'm sure it would remove a lot of motivation to even create a smurf account.

Skias5 votes

You giving up your runes and masteries isnt the problem. It's your level of experience completely destroying a new player's chance of beating you.

Ninjaed4 votes

Then what if there was an option to spectate in real-time with chat access (only) with your friend whose level is lower than 30? You could watch how your friend plays, tell them of their mistakes... And maybe another option where you would be to be able to buy items for them. When you're new, you have no idea what to build (or sometimes even how buying and building from lower-tier items work).

But before any of that, nothing beats a complete tutorial. Things like being taught:

  • what last-hitting is and WHY it's good and WHEN you should stop last-hitting and just full push
  • the different types of ratios and damage type, indicating what you should buy
  • the different accepted roles and what they're expected to do (so NO, new players, do NOT buy thornmail on Ashe like the tutorial has told you to!!)
  • when to stop farming to help your allies

Then more advanced "techniques", such as being taught:

  • what ganking and how to be wary of it
  • what jungling is (especially with the new jungle!), when to gank and how
  • how to tank and "support" properly
  • general map awareness (farm if you want, but your other lane is getting destroyed, so maybe you should defend...)
  • knowing when to retreat! Applies to overextending and chasing (unless you want to do it, just for the lulz ^^' )

And that would cover a good part of what is expected of any player. New players feel good because they keep learning new stuff, feel stronger and stronger, as well as getting an overview of the different roles. That overview will indicate which role they're currently best at, and/or having more fun with. And once that's all done, they can fight against bots, use those new tactics (ganking against bots feels good the first times, and it's easy so it eliminates the obvious fails on your first attempts)...

After all that, playing against other players would be unlocked - I don't think it's too good an idea to have it unlocked too soon, though it may be left at the player's discretion... Regardless, they wouldn't feel as useless as they already have the bases grasped and know they just died because they've been ganked. They then remember the tutorial - warding is useful to prevent that, and so they do, because they don't want to die again and again and feel frustrated about it now, do they?

Hmm as a bonus, I guess tier 1 runes could be free and there could be a short tutorial on them (and masteries), just to inform them of their existence. And since they're free, the tutorial can just say "Feel free to try whatever you like and see what works best for you". Newb trap removed, and other obvious benefits.

I don't know if there's something else that could be done to improve the new players' experience... That's something that has always been bugging me, the nonsensical learning curve. A friend of mine took a VERY LONG time before finally playing DotA (on wc3), then stop because of it... then try LoL a few years later, stop for a bit again... and eventually persevere against bots at first and "monkey see, monkey do"-ing. I'm still very very wary of introducing new people to LoL because I know they will rage and be raged at, making fun for no one...

PS: thanks for reading, hopefully an interesting read it was :D

alcatrazEscapee1 votes

Your tutorial Ideas are pretty much perfect, and I like the idea about not unlocking PvP untill you've completed them.

Personally, I learned the game by playing bots, and never really played PvP untill level 20ish. I think one of the big influences for me was "can I beat intermediate bots?" which I was not able to do for a while.

Also, I think Riot can help new players by giving them areas where they can learn more, wether it be the league of legends website, or any other champion guide/game guide site. Again, for me, I tend to learn a game by looking it up rather than playing tutorials.

One last thing, A lot of newer players (myself included) had trouble learning terms for different things. I can imagine if my past self met me, he wouldn't understand half of what I say. If there was some "universal dictionary" for terms like cs, skill order, WotA, etc. And all the other terms that new players don't know/have no idea what they are.

Quantum Weeb2 votes

There are ways to mitigate some of it. Think about the reasons people smurf.

First we have people like myself who smurf when they have a friend who's new to the game. I would prefer is I had an option "smurf game" so I could use my main to play a game with no runes/masteries where my Elo is counted as the same as my newb friend.

That's the exact same problem, except people play on their main accounts. If you're playing games with your friend at their elo, or even an intermediate elo, you will be stomping every other player who isn't doing the same thing. You haven't actually gotten rid of the problem.

Second we have high Elo players who makes smurfs to get into games with shorter queue times. If these players had the option to just spawn new lvl 30 accounts they wouldn't need to play through levels 1 - 29 ruining games for actual new players.

I agree on the spawning of level 30 accounts, but do people actually make accounts because of queue times? Regardless, we agree on this point, so it would be great if Riot could implement this.

Third we have players who's main have been banned. These players are toxic and spew their vitriol on new players as they level new accounts before they can be banned again. Riot's said they will never do it but a prisoner's island would let these players keep playing with their "own kind" and reduce the number of them wanting to put in the effort to start new accounts from scratch.

Unfortunate, but I'm curious how many players are actually doing this. Riot's current system is working reasonably well, so this would have to be causing a large influx of smurfs in order to be worth reworking the entire system.

If Riot did all of this you'd get rid of a fair number of smurfs and reduce the difficulty new players suffer with them. In particular you'd get rid of the super good diamond smurfs and the super toxic "my main was banned" smurfs which are probably the worse two for new players.

I agree with the second suggestion you made, but definitely not the first and probably not the third unless statistics pointed out that this was actually a huge problem.

I actually think that a decent chunk of the smurf population may come from the crowd that just want to play against people less skilled than they are, whether they are trying out new roles, want a "troll" account where they can play non-meta champs in ranked or those a-holes who just feel like stomping newbies. For the first two, the creation of a level 30 account that is tied to your main account is what I feel would work best. For the group that just likes stomping newbies, well, you can't please everybody.

Thunder Dreamss1 votes

That's the exact same problem, except people play on their main accounts. If you're playing games with your friend at their elo, or even an intermediate elo, you will be stomping every other player who isn't doing the same thing. You haven't actually gotten rid of the problem.

It's not a perfect solution. It does (imo) help with two things.

  1. Most of the player base is bronze or silver. They'll still probably crush newbs without any runes/masteries but as their friends get up around level 15+ the stat's newbs get from runes/masteries might help balance the tables somewhat. It's certainly better then them running a smurf with all the same bonuses as the actual new player.

  2. Once the smurfs are made their more likely to be used in general. I've hopped on my smurf once or twice to see if low level ARAM's are as bad as everyone says. Other people I know have as well.

On top of that by having "smurfs" playing with friends clearly labeled the matchmaking system could try to put equal numbers on each team.

I agree on the spawning of level 30 accounts, but do people actually make accounts because of queue times? Regardless, we agree on this point, so it would be great if Riot could implement this.

I'm pretty sure this is a thing that happens. I've run into a few players who really did seem to be diamond smurfs who gave this reason.

Unfortunate, but I'm curious how many players are actually doing this. Riot's current system is working reasonably well, so this would have to be causing a large influx of smurfs in order to be worth reworking the entire system.

Doing a prisoners island is pretty simple. If you are on prisoners island you can only get in a team of other prisoners. All prisoners half all-chat forcibly turned off. Any premade you're in is treated as all prisoners. Any time you would be banned under the current rules you are instead placed on prisoners island.

When my friend was coming up through the gantlet she endured allot of people harassing her saying things along the lines of "bads like you are why my main is banned" or "if people like you would just unistall I wouldn't be banned for 2 weeks."

Riot's current system only works in that it bans accounts that hit some threshold of toxicity, it doesn't necessarily get rid of the players. From what I've seen they just make new accounts and torment new players.

SmokingPuffin2 votes
  1. Most of the player base is bronze or silver. They'll still probably crush newbs without any runes/masteries but as their friends get up around level 15+ the stat's newbs get from runes/masteries might help balance the tables somewhat. It's certainly better then them running a smurf with all the same bonuses as the actual new player.

Most of the player base is unranked. Bronze players, and this will blow many people's minds, are way way way better than the average League player.

I agree on the spawning of level 30 accounts, but do people actually make accounts because of queue times? Regardless, we agree on this point, so it would be great if Riot could implement this.

I'm pretty sure this is a thing that happens. I've run into a few players who really did seem to be diamond smurfs who gave this reason.

People do this. It's pretty rare. Mostly it's streamers trying to play more games for their subs.

The bigger problem is the people who spam smurfs to noobstomp.

Doing a prisoners island is pretty simple. If you are on prisoners island you can only get in a team of other prisoners. All prisoners half all-chat forcibly turned off. Any premade you're in is treated as all prisoners. Any time you would be banned under the current rules you are instead placed on prisoners island.

Prisoner's island is bad for game health. You end up with a lot of neutral players turning toxic because of exposure to negative players.

Chat restrictions, chat bans, and ranked bans are all healthier ways to discipline players.

When my friend was coming up through the gantlet she endured allot of people harassing her saying things along the lines of "bads like you are why my main is banned" or "if people like you would just unistall I wouldn't be banned for 2 weeks."

Yep, it's a big problem.

Riot's current system only works in that it bans accounts that hit some threshold of toxicity, it doesn't necessarily get rid of the players. From what I've seen they just make new accounts and torment new players.

Riot isn't doing much of the time banning thing anymore. They're currently doing a lot of X game chat restrictions, and recently they started rolling out ranked play restrictions. These systems require you to play on that account in order to clear the restriction, so there isn't the incentive to create smurfs to wait out the time ban as in the Tribunal system.

Thunder Dreamss1 votes

Most of the player base is unranked. Bronze players, and this will blow many people's minds, are way way way better than the average League player.

Just because someone doesn't play ranked doesn't mean their bad. For the sake of argument tho, if somebody is at that low a skill level then they can probably just strait up use their main to play with new friends anyway and all this smurfing vs not isn't really about them.

Prisoner's island is bad for game health. You end up with a lot of neutral players turning toxic because of exposure to negative players.

Chat restrictions, chat bans, and ranked bans are all healthier ways to discipline players.

I'm not saying we do away with the lesser restrictions. It's only players that would be strait up no-play-for-you banned that get put on the island. There might be an issue that there are not enough of them for a proper queue.

Riot isn't doing much of the time banning thing anymore. They're currently doing a lot of X game chat restrictions, and recently they started rolling out ranked play restrictions. These systems require you to play on that account in order to clear the restriction, so there isn't the incentive to create smurfs to wait out the time ban as in the Tribunal system.

Overall, yes, these lesser punishments seem to be more effective. I don't know if they've helped the toxic smurf problem or not. My friend came up when the tribunal was in use. If another new friend ever joins the game maybe I'll see.

SmokingPuffin1 votes

Most of the player base is unranked. Bronze players, and this will blow many people's minds, are way way way better than the average League player.

Just because someone doesn't play ranked doesn't mean their bad. For the sake of argument tho, if somebody is at that low a skill level then they can probably just strait up use their main to play with new friends anyway and all this smurfing vs not isn't really about them.

Certainly not. However, a bronze player has played hundreds of games of League, and this is a game with a long learning curve. The average unranked player hasn't.

I'm not saying we do away with the lesser restrictions. It's only players that would be strait up no-play-for-you banned that get put on the island. There might be an issue that there are not enough of them for a proper queue.

I don't think this will work at all. I don't think there are enough banned players out there to get games together, and you haven't stopped any of them from making smurfs.

Thunder Dreamss1 votes

I don't think this will work at all. I don't think there are enough banned players out there to get games together, and you haven't stopped any of them from making smurfs.

There may not be enough of them. I don't know. What I do know is that there are enough of them to make the new player experience hell.

This doesn't strait up stop these players from making new accounts but it gives them the tempting option of keeping everything they've unlocked and spent money on if only they restrict themselves to playing with others who are as vitriolic as themselves.

SmokingPuffin1 votes

I don't think this will work at all. I don't think there are enough banned players out there to get games together, and you haven't stopped any of them from making smurfs.

There may not be enough of them. I don't know. What I do know is that there are enough of them to make the new player experience hell.

This doesn't strait up stop these players from making new accounts but it gives them the tempting option of keeping everything they've unlocked and spent money on if only they restrict themselves to playing with others who are as vitriolic as themselves.

I think you'll find the problem isn't so much disciplined players creating smurfs. That used to be a thing in Tribunal era. Riot's new systems are doing a pretty good job of incentivizing those players to play on their mains. In particular, the new one where you have to play X normals before you can ranked again is a really good plan for the competitive toxic types.

The way I see it, your main problem right now is players who are creating smurfs for the explicit purpose of noobstomping. Gotta detect these smurfs fast in matchmaking, and you can't ask them questions like "are you experienced in MOBA games?" because they will lie.

It's a difficult problem. My main advice for those with newbie friends is to get them into lowelo chat community and play games with that group rather than solo queue.

Cozarkian1 votes

Riot's said they will never do it but a prisoner's island would let these players keep playing with their "own kind" and reduce the number of them wanting to put in the effort to start new accounts from scratch.

Riot took a step toward this prisoner's island with the new leaverbuster system (lower queue priority) and with the "ranked" only bans, so who knows, it may come one day.

alcatrazEscapee1 votes

Some people also just smurf / play at lower levels because they want to stomp someone. For every smurf game, that one person is probably having a blast, whereas the other 9 might not be.

A perfect soloution would be stop people from associating "stomping people" and "make a smurf". Since that's nigh on impossible, I just think the whole community has to embrace that to stomp someone, sometimes you just have to get better.

Also, your first reason for smurfing doesn't actually solve any problem. You just make it easier for a high level player to play with a low level one. The problem here is not the existence of a smurf, its that someone extremely better is playing with extremely unexperienced players. The root of the problem here is that high level and low level players can't play together without somone getting stomped. The current system takes the average of the mmrs, which means that the high level playey will somewhat stomp, and the lower level will get stomped. your suggesting that you stop the lower level player from getting stomped, but then the higher level player will just find it easier to dominate the enemy team.

Skias3 votes

The only way to stop it is make accounts cost money.

ModWulf Helhammer1 votes

yea-no. You know what the business model of this game we all love and play is called? "Free-to-play" Accounts costing money to create =/= Free-to-play

Skias1 votes

You asked how to stop it. It's the same reason most Free to play games have community problems. You can't get rid of awful people and they have 0 investment in losing their account. Lose an account that cost you $60 hurts a hell of a lot more.

Hyrum Graff1 votes

Multiple summoner names per account.

AetherKingdom5 votes

People who consistently go against non level 30 players on their smurfs are bad. I typically have silver to plat on both teams on my level 25 smurf.

ModKnightsKemplar4 votes

You are right. Smurfs are bad for the game. Here's the problem; Riot can't fix this. All people have to do is use a new email to get a new account. There is literally nothing they can do. Unless you want them to take your computer's serial number, and integrate that with all the companies who made the myriad of computers that LoL players use, and THEN accept that there can only be one account per computer.

Good luck. I'm sure Riot doesn't like it any more than us, but there is literally no solution. I am unaware of any way for Riot to have that level of control over accounts, even if they wanted to. It's just a part of the experience.

Thunder Dreamss3 votes

Riot could reduce the motivation to smurf. It wouldn't fix all smurfing forever but if they addressed the most common reasons to smurf they'd at least help the situation. I outlines a few things they could do elsewhere in this thread.

ModKnightsKemplar1 votes

I read those, and they are neat ideas, but I'm not convinced it would help a whole lot. Players whose accounts get banned are still going to want to play with the rest of us; I would bet that a prisoner's island would make more smurfs.

Your idea about dealing with diamond smurfs is interesting, but I still am not sure I think it would help the problem a lot. I would like to see numbers about how many people actually do this (I know that's impossible). I just don't think either of those options would significantly reduce smurfing.

Thunder Dreamss1 votes

Well if you have the option to keep using your main with all it's champions and RP purchases or make a new one just to play with "normal" players... I suspect most people will just stick with their main.

Riot's the only one with good data on surfing but even if my ideas only address a small portion of smurfs it's still (imo) better than addressing none.

ModKnightsKemplar1 votes

Perhaps so. I just don't love the idea of Riot "solving" it by basically condoning it. Your idea of just allowing people to "go down to their friend's skill level" doesn't really do anything about their actual skill level. They are still going to stomp people. I mean, they can queue with their mains with new people now and do the same thing. I fail to see how that would solve anything.

Thunder Dreamss1 votes

It's not perfect but it would remove one reason to actually make a smurf in the first place. Honestly, people are going to want to play with their friends and playing with friends is one of the main things that brings in new players so Riot kinda has to encourage it.

ModKnightsKemplar1 votes

I don't see how that helps... I would rather it DIDN'T reduce their elo. If it reduces your elo and takes away runes and masteries, that's going to produce the same problems as smurfing (you crushing noobs, etc.). It's better for it NOT to adjust your elo, so at least there's one noob on your team for the other team to try to win.

You may think this is a solution because this technically isn't "smurfing" anymore, but it brings all of the same problems... so how does it help? If I'm a new player, I'm still playing against someone much more experienced than I am.

Thunder Dreamss1 votes

Well right now we have the situation where your elo isn't adjusted and so if you play on your main with your new friend they get dragged up to some middle ground that is WAY WAY to hard for them to deal with. Hence people makes smurfs so their friend has some kind of chance.

If you just reduce the Elo of the main to that of the newb then they stomp newbs. What else is new. Removing runes/masteries gives the actual new accounts some kind of edge over the experienced player.

Further, this helps because it reduces the motivation to make a smurf in the first place. Once somebody has a smurf for any reason their more likely to play it than if they never had one to begin with.

For example, when I read about how common boting was in low level ARAM's I jumped on my smurf to see for myself. This added one more problem new players face above and beyond bots for those few games I spent visiting.* If I hadn't already had a smurf from playing with lowbie friends I never would have bothered checking out low level boting for myself.

. * For the record, I'm not nearly as bad as most smurfs. I at least restrict myself to playing Ultimate Bravery when I'm down there.

Norscout4 votes

Riot just needs to get rid of the arachic leveling system

Skias3 votes

This would help. Also remove any benefit of being new.

Fury and Emperor2 votes

Riot just needs to get rid of the arachic leveling system

Elise thinks the arachnic leveling system is just fine.

Jambulija4 votes

Im really sick of u guys. And before u down-vote pls read coz Im not coming back to this toxic boards for a while to care or respond.

U want this to be split up in an ordered list? sure u do! Here;

The : What u do to be toxic?

  1. This is the 4-th post I have read on this topic on the boards in the last 3 weeks and 3-th in the last 3 days.

  2. They all complained how Rito ignores crucial things and almost did not say "Does it on purpose".

  3. Especially for this topic u all talk how is bad to be a new player and u are not a new player;

  • One part of u is trying to rapidly introduce friends and cant wait to feel like a proud Sensei to their Grasshoppers , rush them, pressure them and make them QQ. And then come here to extinguish their frustration to their failure by flaming the game.

  • The other part after being stuck in bronze/silver (does not really mater) for the whole season (I guess that's the initial poster to this thread), decide to go do it all over again before the new season starts with a fresh profile, then they are welcomed by smurf like them... And then the summoner comes here to complain.

The: Whats wrong with that

  1. Crying for ur fails in "Game-play and balance" one after another for the same stuff without reading(or maybe u did read it) the post with the same topic posted 24 hours ago still in "Hot" makes u spammers and trolls. And we all love those! Right?

  2. Because u all feel proud from the attention u post gets u start believing that u helped. U did not, u further more log in with ur 3 other accounts and down-vote the people that try to make a discussion and help: and in some way disagree with u. The button says "Create a Discussion". And the down-vote is for flamers, trolls, spammers and inappropriate comments. This is not Redit.

  3. None of u ever even gave a suggestion on how to improve the situation(to which I agree its getting worse every day). This gets me to my first point : U are spamming and as a result u are discouraging the people at Rito to read about the issues we have.

Boards are supposed to be fun and wiki like, where players and employees collaborate and have fun together, get the feeling that they are the same and share a thing that they love to entertain them self's with: a game called "League of Legends". And in the process evolving it bit by bit.

So don't alienate the community from Rito by trolling and suggesting that Rito is evil as Veigar and Teemo combined together and wants to burn them and poison them. U wanna help? Bump an existing thread or if its old: post the link to it in a new one, adding ur thoughts under it.

Post a suggestion how to improve things don't just bark at the community.

And to respond to ur concern about new players: I was a new player a year ago, and occasionally i run in to smurfs - two strikes and Im down! I did cried out loud at those moments "Really!! How is that....". But i never left a game, if it was futile just entered /ff. And oddly enough I was never angry at the game. I was more intrigued "How do i get like that!!" or "There must be a way to spank around the map that MasterYi! Got to find it! ". So i wanted to play more ! Not QQ.

I have 4 other examples, the friends i introduced. I tried to push the first one until he said "I have more wins and more fun playing without u!". To this day they are all playing. Some might not play ranked coz ... Lets say : one got married and don't have the capacity to care about ranks in lol in his daily life. But non of them ever wanted quit coz it was hard to learn. They run in to a smurf, the worst response was - "Next one is with bots - or ARAM."

As I said the community here is not helping me, my play or the game in any way so i don't need it any more. Ill keep playing league coz is fun and I love it, not coz its perfect.

And here is a song that often makes me eager to play, enjoy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nlJuwO0GDs

Wukong Carries U3 votes

A lot of new players expect some sort of instant gratification, and blame smurfs instead of understanding what they should be doing. The positive effects of smurfing promotes an atmosphere of perseverance. If you make it to 30, then you will be ready for the even more demanding ranked games.

xGvPx2 votes

this ^ LVL1 RANKED? no thanks...

Skias5 votes

So we need to make playing this GAME a fucking gauntlet until you get to the other level of abuse that is ranked? No wonder people don't make it to 30 anymore. Your logic is what drives people away.

SaucyBeast3 votes

I highly disagree. The only way you get better is to play versus people who are better than you. This applies for any matchmaking system that places you with people around your skill level.

If you don't play versus better players, you'll be in a rut and repeat the same things over and over. Improving while playing with people around your skill level forces you to proactively look for mistakes and proactively work on them. Playing with people around your skill level will leave you ignorant to when you make a mistake because they won't capitalize on it because they are the same skill as you. If you play versus better players, you don't have to proactively search for mistakes, you just mimic better player's behaviors and habits when they outplay you so you know what you're doing wrong.

SaucyBeast3 votes

As a D1 player, I love when I get the chance to play versus Challenger players. I embrace the opportunity to be able to observe their playstyle and learn why they are better than me.

CaptnJakSparrow3 votes

As a D1 player, I love when I get the chance to play versus Challenger players. I embrace the opportunity to be able to observe their playstyle and learn why they are better than me.

Usually a really good computer if you look at the avg pings between divisions.

Hrud3 votes

As a D1 player, I love when I get the chance to play versus Challenger players. I embrace the opportunity to be able to observe their playstyle and learn why they are better than me.

That's all fine and dandy, but your situation is not the same AT ALL as that of players new to the game. You have your mechanics down, you know what champions and items do, you have game experience, know how to play and are dedicated to the game.

This means you have a solid enough game knowledge to be able to appreciate what is going on and why and how you're getting schooled.
New players do NOT have this enlightened perspective. You are also much closer to the play level of the Challenger than a level 10 is from a Diamond player.

Eljin2 votes

This means you have a solid enough game knowledge to be able to appreciate what is going on and why and how you're getting schooled.
New players do NOT have this enlightened perspective. You are also much closer to the play level of the Challenger than a level 10 is from a Diamond player.

Thank you for saying that. I was getting worried as a few people seemed to lose perspective and were sticking with this unrealistic mantra of how newer players improve compared to those established in the game already.

Your example is funny because my friend just had that exact situation happen to him last night and sent me a screenshot that he took to send to Riot and politely ask 'Wth, mate?'. He's level 12, played about 40 total live matches, and trying to stick with the game so we can play together later on when we feel like we both understand the game better and don't suck.

He ran into a player who went 30-1, controlled basically every lane, made his entire team miserable and bitchy, and waiting for the surrender so they could move onto a new match. This is not healthy for newer players like us, and it amazes me that some people don't understand this.

Guess which player it was in the screen-shot.

ChargeItDownMid2 votes

[deleted]

Skias3 votes

It's not so much about the learning curve as the complete destruction of motivation to keep playing long before someone can even become invested in this game. It's still a game and completely un-fun pre-30.

Nosef2 votes

Smurfin's bad, mmmkay?

PapaFizz2 votes

Rito could just fix the matchmaking on normals and team builder. They are essentially broken at this point (Especially team builder IMHO).

Perhaps a new more strict system at the lower levels based on a few strict parameters for detecting smurfs. Hell even the vocabulary they use and the keys these players hit would help rito.

The environment for me as a new player was great but I already knew a bit about the game from friends and videos and was almost instantly able to pick it up and find a champion that I enjoyed. I also learned about LolNexus and all the proper vocabulary from watching a single stream.

Believe me, a large percentage of the smurfs that go 20-5 in a game are bronze V (And usually very proud of it). If the tutorial system was better and there were not so many noob traps (runes, masters, items, and champions) then I bet all the new players could take on these bronze V smurfs with ease.

DrMemes2 votes

People don't get decent at the game until level 30 + 100 normal games.

A lot of people have suggested to somehow link smurfs to main accounts and get boosts on exp to reach it faster or just get more exp based on your MMR, but riot wont do this because they make tons of money out of exp boosts.

Solaxo2 votes

D E A D, not D.E.A.D.

I Kill Commies1 votes

You know, playing against people who are much better than you makes you improve faster than playing against people who suck as much as you, even if you do get wrecked. I don't understand why people are so mad at playing against smurfs in PRE LEVEL 30 NORMAL GAMES. Winning or losing a normal, especially pre level 30, means absolutely nothing. The only thing you can gain from normal games is practice, which is in itself more effective when you practice against good players.

Eljin5 votes

You know, playing against people who are much better than you makes you improve faster than playing against people who suck as much as you, even if you do get wrecked. I don't understand why people are so mad at playing against smurfs in PRE LEVEL 30 NORMAL GAMES

I'm sorry but this just is not true. I will agree playing people equal to your skill level or slightly better is the optimal player type to improve yourself on, but there becomes such a skill-gap between smurf and newer player that you aren't going to really take anything away from the match in the way of new tactics and information. What you get is dumped on in the first ten minutes, frustration, and then a surrender at twenty.

One of my very first games I faced a Wukong who went 20-2-20-ish. I can't tell you how to handle Wukong after that match. Other games, where I played a Wukong who was around my own level, I was able to figure out how to play versus him. On my second day of playing, I ran into a Shaco who had 41 kills. Literally, 41 kills. I went to his Lolking page (still have it saved to see how long he'd go before going into this mythical Smurf Queue), and he was averaging about 25 a game at that point. Couldn't tell you what to do against Shaco from that game - he showed up, you died. What I know from Shaco is from what I read on websites, not game experience.

Some of us can only play pre-level 30 normal games, and these are the games we are trying to use to understand the game, get better at the game, and enjoy ourselves. If you can't understand why people don't like the fact that experienced players are intentionally coming down into this newer bracket to ruin the games, then I don't know what to say to you.

Skias7 votes

You are missing the point. You look at it from a competitive angle which the new player does not. The new player wants fun. Nothing is fun about getting shit on repeatedly because of an unbalanced match up.

PickleBabah5 votes

Mostly why starters don't learn from getting rekt from a (much) higher skill-level is normally because they are trying to grasp multiple things at once, such as the basics of the game. And then there is the very complicated "x counters y; y counters z; z counters x; etc."

The reason why this happens to be "such a big deal" is because normally, before playing League (or even during/after) people cannot contain their emotions and they would be quick to quit. They would be more prone to giving up because they always die with no time to even learn last-hitting. Sure, friends could always invite friends, but there is no reason why there shouldn't be people going solo.

Practice against good players is definitely a good thing, but there is a very prominent threshold that should be upheld where people should play against people their level and people who play people better than them.

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