http://bluebuddies.com/gallery/Smurf_Art_Showcase/gif/Impus_Art_Smurf_Attack.gif Alternate title: racist propaganda against Meglings.

I often hear that the new player experience often becomes "get matched with a bunch of smurfs looking to pubstomp, get called trash over and over again, quit." That's not good for them, or for the long-term health of LoL.

So, what should be done? I've created this thread as a place for people to discuss ideas for helping newer Summoners and protecting them from malevolent smurfs.

Types of Smurf

I can think of a few possible categories of smurf.

• "I want to help my new friends." This person isn't being a jerk, but they're definitely going to be very skilled relative to their new account's MMR. They're in a genuinely difficult position, because if they play alongside their new friends, either on their high-level accounts or on a new account for which they've selected the high-skill option on the self-identification question, they're going to be throwing their friends into a chaotic mixed-skill matchup.
• "I want to stomp newbies." This person is a toxic jerk. The default experience is supposed to be an even match. It'd be one thing if the other team had agreed beforehand that they want to play against much more experienced players, but they haven't. Pubstomping smurfs are also, presumably, the most likely to claim to be completely new when that pop-up appears asking about experience level.
• "I got permabanned, so I made a new account." This is one of the main arguments advanced for a "prisoner's island" system.

The Problem

The system doesn't have much ability to quickly distinguish genuinely new players from smurfs. As a result, people can end up in games where others are dramatically better than they are. At best, these people will be friendly, openly admit that they're more experienced, and try to help the new people learn. I somehow do not think that this is the reality. More likely, based on what I've heard, the new people get eaten alive, while their teammates yell at them for not knowing the meta.

What To Do?

Anyone have any good ideas for what Riot could do to improve the new player experience in this regard? There are already systems to identify smurfs, but they do take some time to figure out who's who, and I could imagine someone quitting after being wrecked three or four times.

Some random ideas:

• Give new people a pop-up message letting them know that the first few games may be pretty rocky as the system figures out how to place them, given the presence of smurfs. Take the opportunity to let them know about the Report feature, and encourage them to use it if anyone's a jerk to them.
• At least for people who claim to be truly new when that "estimate your skill level" box appears, require a handful of co-op versus AI games with no chat. This will help new people learn to play, while giving the system at least a handful of games to measure KDA and other statistics to try to identify smurfs. Why no chat? Because when people are still figuring out how to move around, a stream of text from even friendly smurfs isn't that important, and there's a high risk of rage, especially if smurfs on the team find themselves losing to bots because of new players.
• Make a more detailed tutorial than "Goooood jooooooob, Summoner! Now buy your thornmail to defeat Master Yi." (Have they already done this?) I recently tried out Dawngate, and it has a very good newbie single-player tutorial, which allows them to pause and read contextual explanations of game elements as they arise.
• Provide a coaching mode where higher-level Summoners can spectate and chat with their friends.
• It would, of course, be nice if Riot could improve its automatic smurf-detection as well.

Those are just some random conversation starters.

Prior Threads

Here are some threads from waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back on this topic.

• I invited friends to play. They quit. — Sadly, the comic links are now expired.
• My old ideas thread. — Pretty outdated, but a snapshot of community discussion in 2012 on this issue.