Smurfs are without a doubt an issue, however not nearly as influential as the misguided way riot chooses to deal with them. What should addressed is other issues that lead to smurfing minus the people who do it for fun as obviously those people do not enjoy the game for what it is but rather enjoy the idea of ruining an experience for another person. That notion aside, lets highlight some of the issues that lead to smurfing that can be addressed.
1.) Queue health/Dodge penalties- so most of us might be aware in higher elos and, should not enough new players continue to join the game, soon lower elos will have population issues making it hard to find a match. When you do find a match and for whatever reason (i'm not gonna make any speculations here.) you decide you would rather not play the game about to start with your current team. so you receive a dodge timer. In this case, many people decide to have 1 or more back up accounts to avoid completely wasting time during a dodge penalty. This raises questions as to what can be done about this that would benefit the player-base. If you have ideas feel free to reply with them.
2.)Bans/Suspensions This one is arguably an even more common cause of smurfs than the previous and as a honest person this is the category that led to myself smurfing. Similar to to the previous topic this is the result of poor management. While many things supposedly lead to suspensions or bans, i think most would agree that toxic behaviors such as bullying, hatespeech, flaming, etc. are the most frequent reasons people get banned. Typically toxic behavior stems from frustration and poor management of said frustration. Now, obviously people who are literally spreading hate are inexcusable so those people will be disregarded for this next part as they 100% should be banned everytime. So one might question how can we limit frustration that causes toxic behaviors in the community. To limit the frustration we should probably be addressing ROOT CAUSES that lead to people getting frustrated including: people who grief and intentionally sabotage their team, smurfs(ironically), other toxic players, and extremely poor match making. I will elaborate on the match making issues later. Again, if you think you know a solution or have an idea, fee free to reply in the thread.
3.) Playing with friends of different skill levels/ Boosting etc. In this case this one is more of a stand alone issue itself. Ranked Flex 5v5 and Twisted tree line 3v3 are the only two ranked game modes where friends of different skill levels should be queuing together. (example: a diamond 2 neeko main playing on a silver account with low elo friends or drunk/ under the influence of a substance.) Should all other issues causing smurfs be addressed first, then riot would be able to restrict people who smurf in solo/duo queue because it would be easy to determine their motivation for doing so.
Now, lets address the other part, the way riot chooses to deal with smurfs. This leads to a conversation about specific factor of the whole system riot uses for match making. Lets call this factor Smurf Detection and penalization. Some of you might be familiar with this mechanic riot has talked about it in the past.
The general idea behind this mechanic is that players who are detected as "smurfs" will be marked and matched with "other smurfs". From my understanding of the mechanic, it works in this manner, Example: A player makes a new account and plays a couple games. This player is already quite familiar with the game. As a result, this player rather easily wins the first 3 matches they play. This player is now "detected" and tagged as a smurf. For the next few games, this player will match against other smurfs. Whether or not the "detection" desists after losing a few games i have been unable to determine accurately enough to say with confidence, and trying to get riot games to be truthful with any part of matchmaking is difficult to put it lightly.
This whole mechanic is widely problematic as many issues occur. Players who are not actually smurfs, get detected by lucky chance (or rather unlucky). Needless to say if the player is not actually a smurf or is one of a lower skill level and understanding of the game (because not all smurfs are equal) the player in question is for lack of a polite phrasing, screwed. They are going to lose some games coming up that will not even be close to fair. The other issue which i mentioned off-handedly is smurfs of different levels in skill level/game knowledge. Which i'm reasonably sure that the system does not differentiate between.
So what these situations result in, is players that have a considerable advantage against actual new players but remain in lower ranked elos for extended periods of time because the system attempts to penalize smurfing. In reality, all this actually accomplishes is ruining hundred's of games for new players that are not as familiar with the champions, their capabilities, interactions, win conditions, macroplay etc. Unfortunately, during the years i have spent playing the game i have seen more regression than progress in many of the long standing issues existing with the game.
