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Gameplay idea: Registered Smurf System

MrSc0tty·5/19/2015, 2:54:27 PM·4 votes·1,757 views

Hello everybody. I made a post a while back trying to open up a dialogue with Riot about the new player experience and how it needs to be improved, and while I believe my frustration may have turned away a red response, it seemed that the overall consensus resonated with veterans and new players alike-months later, I'm still getting replies to it either asking for advice as a new player, or commiserating as a vet who is having trouble helping their new friends enjoy this game we all love, or at least like enough to complain loudly about.

So now I'd like to propose an idea to the folks at the Riot player behavior team: give players on creation of an account the option to register as a smurf.

This registry would be created with the intention to allow people to have smurfs for the reasons that are generally considered okay (Practicing champions you don't know at a lower MMR, playing with friends, coaching) while making it somewhat easier to weed out people who are making an experience toxic for new players.

This would not be visible to players on either team, and would give the following changes:

  1. Report sensitivity. It would take fewer reports and instances of AFKing for Riot's automatic punishment systems to punish the account.

  2. Honor XP rewards. The first time a player who is not registered as a smurf honors a player who is for "helpful" or "friendly", that player would receive a very significant XP boost, possibly double XP for a game in which you get honored. You can't get the boost from a player more than once, and you can't get the boost from other smurfs, a measure to make "abusing" the system more difficult. Receiving a report of any kind from either team for the game would disable the boost for that game.

Q: "But what if people game the system somehow just to level other accounts really fast?"

A: Does that harm anything? Remember that the boosts are purely to XP, not IP, so players would not have any kind of in-game advantage, and in the end all it would result in are higher leveled accounts that have an incentive to be helpful or friendly rather than toxic.

Q: "But if someone creates a smurf account just to be toxic and stomp, they'll just say they're a new player."

A: Yes, toxic smurfs would probably still exist if they were created just for the purposes of being toxic. However i find that many smurfs are not really created to be toxic, just to practice or play more casually. Offering these players a solid reward for helping the newbies before they move on to just playing smurfs, rather than doing what they do now which is usually stomping a few games and then playing smurfs, is not a bad thing. Adding positive elements into the first few games of league a new player is involved in can go a long way to helping out the new player experience, and is far easier than trying to eliminate all the negative influences.

Q: "What if a new player registers as a smurf to get the XP rewards?"

A: The popup would not mention the rewards. It would probably be something along the lines of "Do you already have another account on League of Legends?" A player who knows about the registered smurf system is one that is probably at least familiar with the MOBA genre. And if not, once again it just means more accounts with a compelling reason to be friendly rather than toxic, which is not in itself a bad thing.

TL;DR: Allow people to register as a smurf upon creating a new account. Registered smurf accounts are punished more quickly in the report/AFK system, but receive a significant boost to XP (not IP) when honored by a non-smurf player for being "friendly" or "helpful", allowing registered smurfs to level up more quickly.

7 Comments

disregardable5/19/2015, 2:56:48 PM2 votes

Riot doesn't actually want smurfs. Going forward, they're trying to deal with the issues that lead people to creating smurfs, not accommodate them.

kiloechoesp5/19/2015, 5:15:49 PM1 votes

Smurfs are only bad for the game because they stop players from playing on their mains. If you play too good as a smurf, you get matched against better players. I don't think it's much of a problem anymore.

Matchmaking too op.

djjomon5/19/2015, 7:39:43 PM1 votes

I was trying to figure out what would actually prevent a new player from registering as a smurf. I'll be honest, your idea of the popup not mentioning rewards might not help, as often players join because of friends who play. But I have a two ideas:

  1. Log into your main on the website (not client), input username and password of the smurf to register. Account sharing is not allowed, so if you have the password to multiple accounts, they better be yours. Basically, linking accounts.
  2. Refer-a-friend rewards disabled on registered smurfs. Chances are if you're referring, you'd rather refer people on your main. This could be re-enabled if your main already has 5 referrals, and accounts are linked. I understand some people might not like this idea. But it's a reward vs. reward tradeoff.
  3. Make XP rewards optional. Many streamers enjoy doing "Unranked to Challenger" marathons. It would be cheating if they have XP boosts. Boost rewards will be on by default.

But now here's the question, would there be a penalty for not registering a smurf?