Smurfs are ruining the ranked system

50% forced winrate + duos + smurfs + one shot snowball meta = shitty game experience

I contacted support about precisely this issue and what it is doing to matchmaking, especially when the players who get boosted by smurfs end up in games where they stand no chance. And that's not even to mention how this is the main reason why the game is currently inaccessible to new players.

This is the response I got:

I understand how frustrating this is, and while I can't speak for any future plans, know that smurfing is not against the rules as players are allowed to make a new account whenever they wish. That said, unfortunately, I'm not part of the design team, so I can't make use of your concerns. However, I would recommend you share this concern on the boards and see what others think about it. We often have Riot employees visit the boards to see what the community is talking about.

I've never seen any evidence that Riot employees take note of posts such as yours, and certainly haven't ever seen any of them comment on this issue.

afk ruins the game more. Better a master smurf in enemy team than another afk in my team.

but rito wont change tis :3

Um...

As a gold 4 mid laner I don't appreciate going against a Diamond 1 smurf zed main.

It wasnt a good game.

It's like cheating. You're like a 250 pound boxer which is supposed to fight against another 250 pound guy; instead, you cheat and fight against 100 pound kids.

What did Riot do about it, these years? Nothing, so it's a welcome thing. Good job :P

Riot endorses smurfing because it gives them more money. the tyler1 situation is a good example. instead of unbanning him, they forced him to climb through the shit tiers all over again, which is basically smurfing.

They ruin at most one game for YOU.

They'll be out of your elo in less than two days worth of playing so don't make it sound that because you lost ONE game to them they ruin everything.

EDIT: How many times have there been smurfs on your team tho? It evens out.

{quoted}

I've noticed that a lot of really good players have ended up in some of my low elo games, and i dont know if its just me but playing with a diamond level player in silver just doesnt seem fair? And I think it makes the climb that much harder don't you think? It might be that the highest im meant to get to is plat or silver or whatever, but the difference between a plat and a diamond is astonishing. And it surely adds to that 'elo hell' aspect. I can honestly confirm ive vsd at least 2 known high elo smurfs this week, and have had quite a horrible time of it in my ranked positions.

I don't have a problem playing against smurfs, i'll do fine. I have a problem with my team feeding their asses off cause they aren't at that level and me losing rank cause of my team. I lost so many games cause i end up with a poor bot lane, while the other team has ringers. its frustrating.

Don't get mad at them ruining your game and wasting your time though. If you so much as get annoyed they'll have their team 5 man report you and you'll get instantly chat banned because for some reason when someone carries their team hard the people they carried forget all about how shitty of an experience playing against a smurf is and do the smurfs bidding.

Then you'll lose your account and have to get a new one.

What ruins the games are kids that play minecraft all day and barely graduate from bot games after hitting level 30 and going straight into ranked games.

I'll take all the smurfs you can throw at me over these kids at any given time, at least there is a challenge in that.

The issue with smurfing is not only is it extremely hard to detect, but would also be kind of annoying as people make seperate accounts for many reasons. Smurfs are no where near common, especially since its very easy for them to climb. Of course in Plat there are more than bronze/silver/gold. But by plat i hope you at least you know WHEN you are making a mistake, and can fix that.

Sure fighting a smurf sucks but enforcing everyone can only play on 1 account ever is also dumb. The best solution is to just make it EASIER for these people to climb to get them out faster.

Also sorry but if you DESERVED high elo, then 1 game against a smurf out of every 20 isnt gonna kill you.

It's not the rare summoner who stomps that bothers me. It's the common second or third 'troll' account that's annoying. There are plenty of players who just buy a second account a tier or two below them and then goof around. It only takes one jerk like that to ruin the game for 4 people and make it competitively meaningless for another 5. :(

What makes me sad is how many times someone makes a post like this, and yet nothing happens....The excuses I've seen given are 'But what if they want to play with their friends?'; that is what Normals are for. IMO Smurfing in Ranked should be a bannable offence

I have a smurf account but it's primarily to teach my new friend the game. Keep in mind I'm high silver/low gold at best, so "smurf" might be an over exaggeration. Even on my "smurf" I feel as though consistently I'm playing against higher skilled players.

It's something Riot will never fix. Mostly due to streamers smurfing their climb to diamond on like 7 different accounts. Plus there's no real way to accurately track smurfing, and MMR usually gets them into plat pretty quick (usually ~20 games) unless they intentionally lose like 30 games in a row every couple of days to keep silver MMR.

Nothing new, has been said before, proven before and Riot doesn't care. Next.

There is no way to prevent smurfing as long as accounts (and access to ranked) are free and only require an email address to create.

It's literally impossible. Personally I think accounts should be tied to something less accessible then an email address, like a phone number. Yes, there are still ways to get multiple phone numbers, but they are far less accessible than email addresses.

Would actually love to be against a smurf. All the smurfs have been on my teams and the feed relentlessly because, "I'm a 27/2 diamond smurf, watch me 1v5."

Yeah, surprisingly when you take all the kills and then run in the enemy team solo when they all have some form of CC, you tend to just die and take the whole game with you.

Here's the kicker. Say 1 sunny day smurfing is fixed, the way the q and matchmaking is designed right now (not just in this game) will never fix this problem: tanking your elo only to climb again by stomping.

As a D2 smurf, we mostly smurf because Riots banning system is insane. Any ounce of negativity results in punishments, which is stupid because you can just mute someone lol.

I tend to lose faith in my games, "GG we lost, bot lane fed too hard" = Ban for negativity. I dont int, I dont afk, I simply get banned because I take the game too seriously wanting to win every game, thus I get mad at team mates for intentionally losing the game and intentionally not listening, yet they get off the hook to any punishment. If they just got a Play 5 normal games till you can play ranked again as their punishment, then I probably wouldnt be so negative.