From an average player, this is ruining the game

Minecraftforxbox·Apr 24, 2018·10 votes·3,846 views

Let me start by saying, I do not know the direct way to solve this, but this is starting to get out of hand and be quite ridiculous. I consistently end ranked in Silver every season and yes, I understand that some part of that is my fault as I do not play a ton and such, but I just had a game where 3 out of 5 of my enemies were plat smurfs with 1 smurf on my team. This is starting to get ridiculous. There has to be some way to prevent this from happening, as I am essentially getting paired with plats in my ranked games. When this doesn't happen, I consistently get in matches, when in Silver 1/2, with high golds on the enemy team. I understand that their mmr may be low or mine may be high, but that, to me, ruins the point of ranked. If my mmr is high enough to place me with high golds, then I should be allowed to climb the ladder to get to gold. Place me with other high Silvers. I know that allowing rank differentials to be matched together can be helpful on the higher end of the ladder to lower queue times, but at the median rank, where most players are (Silver), there should not be an issue with finding 9 other Silver players to play against. To me, the literal point of ranked is to play against other players at your rank. When I am getting placed with players higher than my rank, it isn't even ranked at that point. I am the President of a League of Legends club at my college and I really do enjoy this game, but this alone is starting to ruin the game for me and quickly causing me to lose my interest in continuing the promotion of this game at my school. We have talked about this at our meetings and many other players have agreed this is an issue. Please fix this.

Edit: I understand this is going to get criticism, but people commenting are not in Silver. You can say what you want but you are not the average player when you are also Plat/Diamond. The average player doesn't go on here, so I am trying to shed light on what the average player is going through to make the most positive experience for the most amount of players.

20 Comments

5050BSApr 24, 20187 votes

We are at mid season. All the Hard stuck Plat and Diamond players are now logging onto their Smurfs so they can feel like they are not total failures.

It Ruins Ranked. It would be like every Challenger logging on to a Plat/Diamond smurf and ruining their games. But there are A LOT more Plat players then Challenger players so it impacts the Rank games a ton more.

IMO Smurfing should be bannable. You should need to link any extra account you have to your main and if found out you are gaming the system then all accounts get punished.

Scary DoorApr 24, 20182 votes

{quoted}

We are at mid season. All the Hard stuck Plat and Diamond players are now logging onto their Smurfs so they can feel like they are not total failures.

Not sure how being in the top 5-10% of all players is a "total failure", on any objective grading system that would be an "A", but I guess we all have different standards for success.

It Ruins Ranked. It would be like every Challenger logging on to a Plat/Diamond smurf and ruining their games. But there are A LOT more Plat players then Challenger players so it impacts the Rank games a ton more.

Yes and no, you can also get a smurf on your team just as much as the enemy can. People only talk about the times that they go against a smurf, but never complain when one is on their team. Had a Master-smurf on my team once, guy hard carried a game in mid-gold Elo like it was Bronze 5. In a way, I felt bad, but I gladly took the win.

IMO Smurfing should be bannable. You should need to link any extra account you have to your main and if found out you are gaming the system then all accounts get punished.

They have no way of enforcing this, any system you come up with for detecting/chasing down smurfs, people can find a way around it with ease. It's easy to change IPs, Hardware IDs, etc. There isn't a way to stop smurfing, particularly on a free-to-play game like League. Even in Pay/subscription games it only costs a small amount of money to create a new account so there's really no way around it.

Besides, if a family shares a computer, it's going to be tough to tie one account to the same Elo and call that fair.

As much as you may not like it (and I can understand your frustration) you have to realize that smurfing is a part of the game, deal with it.

InvidieApr 24, 20185 votes

accept the fact that you're not good enough :)

MinecraftforxboxApr 24, 20183 votes

As I said, I accept that it is my responsibility to play at a level sufficient enough to climb, but I should be playing to climb from Silver to Gold, not being forced to attempt to play at a level to jump from Silver to Plat because of smurfs and a broken mmr system. I personally don't even think a balanced mmr on each team is ok either. If I am Silver playing ranked, I should be placed with other Silvers. Not be placed with a couple bronze and a couple gold and same on their team and it all evens out.

InvidieApr 24, 20182 votes

{quoted}

As I said, I accept that it is my responsibility to play at a level sufficient enough to climb, but I should be playing to climb from Silver to Gold, not being forced to attempt to play at a level to jump from Silver to Plat because of smurfs and a broken mmr system. I personally don't even think a balanced mmr on each team is ok either. If I am Silver playing ranked, I should be placed with other Silvers. Not be placed with a couple bronze and a couple gold and same on their team and it all evens out.

well, theres nothing you can do, this issue has existed for so long, riot wont do anything about it.

remakoroApr 24, 20185 votes

Not. Not some part of it is your fault. Its ENTIRELY your fault. You are not making enough impact to get consistent winrate that would allow you to rank up. Why person thats entirely at mercy of circumstances should be able to climb?

MinecraftforxboxApr 24, 20181 votes

How can I get a consistent winrate when I consistently get people in my games that are not close to my rank?

remakoroApr 24, 20182 votes

By playing well each and every game. Yea you cant be victorious in every single game. Some of them really unwinnable and some of them will be won no matter how badly you will fuck up. Most likely you are getting the same or similar amount of smurfs or trolls or "other things that wont let you win" on your team and on opposite team. Even if there is smurf only on the other team it does not mean its autolose. If you do well on lane vs him he might arrive into mid game not 20 1 3 but only 5 1 2. Which is much more managable. But suppose its something similar to natural calamity over which you have no power (which isnt actually true). You still have to shine in other games in order to get wins where it isnt decided by uncontrollable factors.

But whats the point of climbing if you cant actually handle people of higher skill than your current rank supposed to have?

MinecraftforxboxApr 24, 20182 votes

This post is not pointing to the fact that I am tired of not being able to climb to Gold, the point of this post is that I am getting placed with Golds when I myself am not in Gold. On top of that, I am essentially being placed in matches with Plats.

I don't have an issue with not dying in lane phase to these players. This is going to sound like the blame game and to an extent it is, but when these players realize that they aren't getting fed, they simply rotate and get fed off of other teammates. It doesn't matter if I also rotate because while I can absorb the pressure, my teammates can't, they still get fed, and then I am severely at a disadvantage. I can ping, try to communicate as much as I can, and even if they don't get that fed, like you said only having 5 kills rather than 20, once we get past lane phase, they simply maneuver in a way that is way above my skill level, have faster reaction speeds than me, etc. To my point on another comment, those differences are at least manageable when playing against someone slightly above my skill level, but the differences are more than they should be when I am playing against a Plat in a ranked game as a silver.

SennaFirstPickApr 24, 20181 votes

hello, im the average player, i got matched with ppl higher rank than me, i won some games, im gold now.both my accounts are gold with one being higher than the other, don't know why. Search Doctor Hous, icon is bronze from season 3, i hit gold in season 7. you just need to git gud ma frend

RagnaveilApr 25, 20181 votes

Not exactly true. I'm a buddy of his (we both are a part of a esports club at our college) and i've seen where he's coming from in a non-biased view. I've played on my smurf in ranked matches and he's not wrong. Sure, Plats might not be in his matches, but the issue is game knowledge and how one uses it with their gameplay. You could have a new player get to gold if they understand what strategies work best in each ELO. Meanwhile, you could have a 3-year vet who keeps landing in silver still have no idea what strategy works best in that ELO. Silver tends to have an issue of people either not having a clue what strategy works or are lazy on trying to think about it, which then in turn for many people who are aspiring to get better at the game receive terrible one sided matches here and there that they possibly can't win without the entire team understanding the win condition. Also don't bring one region's queue and compare it to another's (I.E Getting Gold in EUW might be High/Mid Silver in NA).

Scary DoorApr 24, 20183 votes

{quoted}

Let me start by saying, I do not know the direct way to solve this, but this is starting to get out of hand and be quite ridiculous. I consistently end ranked in Silver every season and yes, I understand that some part of that is my fault as I do not play a ton and such, but I just had a game where 3 out of 5 of my enemies were plat smurfs with 1 smurf on my team. This is starting to get ridiculous. There has to be some way to prevent this from happening, as I am essentially getting paired with plats in my ranked games. When this doesn't happen, I consistently get in matches, when in Silver 1/2, with high golds on the enemy team. I understand that their mmr may be low or mine may be high, but that, to me, ruins the point of ranked. If my mmr is high enough to place me with high golds, then I should be allowed to climb the ladder to get to gold. Place me with other high Silvers. I know that allowing rank differentials to be matched together can be helpful on the higher end of the ladder to lower queue times, but at the median rank, where most players are (Silver), there should not be an issue with finding 9 other Silver players to play against. To me, the literal point of ranked is to play against other players at your rank. When I am getting placed with players higher than my rank, it isn't even ranked at that point. I am the President of a League of Legends club at my college and I really do enjoy this game, but this alone is starting to ruin the game for me and quickly causing me to lose my interest in continuing the promotion of this game at my school. We have talked about this at our meetings and many other players have agreed this is an issue. Please fix this.

Edit: I understand this is going to get criticism, but people commenting are not in Silver. You can say what you want but you are not the average player when you are also Plat/Diamond. The average player doesn't go on here, so I am trying to shed light on what the average player is going through to make the most positive experience for the most amount of players.

This explanation isn't going to ease your frustration, but I'll try to give some context.

I did placements in Season 7 (after being Plat IV in season 6), I got Silver I... in essence I was a "plat smurf", but I wasn't trying to "smurf", I was just trying to climb. People still were upset at me because the skill disparity in Silver is HUGE, some teams have some very skilled players on them that will clearly be climbing, others are where they belong and still more are destined for the fall to Bronze. Unfortunately, all of the above can occur in the same game, I have seen it multiple times... the team that gets the worst player will lose, that's the golden rule of League. Last season was the single hardest climb back to Plat for me, part of it was my desire for this game was (and is still) weakening, part of it that the matchmaking is horrendous.

In any event, a couple of seasons earlier I did the Bronze to Plat climb---ran into my share of smurfs/Elo Boosters in about the Bronze 1 to Silver 1 range. Gold 5 sucks as well because that's where the MMR boosted accounts happen to be, you can tell who has been boosted almost immediately upon the start of the game.

Ranked has become a dumpster fire, I haven't even played this season and I won't. Basically there are only 1.2 million ranked accounts in North America this season, the lowest total ever, and you can bet that at least one-out-of-six of those are smurfs/multiple accounts. You can climb, but you will run into smurfs, be sure of that.

MinecraftforxboxApr 24, 20181 votes

I understand the placement thing. 3 People in the club at my university were Plat last season and were placed in Silver, so I get it. As you said, and typically in my games, the Plat level players are typically not frustrated, saying they were placed low, because I got my share of those people at the start of the season, but these players openly admit that they are smurfing. The Draven in my most recent match was smurfing and they did not seem like a Plat level player, but as he said he never plays Draven and is learning him. I get that. But I am getting to a point where every other match, I am getting smurfs that play at a level way above anyone else in the game and it ruins the point.

KaiokoApr 24, 20182 votes

Taking a look at your past 3 ranked matches -- the highest person was Gold V while the lowest was Silver II. How exactly is this so far apart? The skill level between those rankings is minimal.

Regarding the issue of smurfs -- there is a no solution and like you said yourself -- "I do not know a direct way to solve this."

MinecraftforxboxApr 24, 20181 votes

I was not directly saying that the issue regarding rank differential was literally today or yesterday, but it has happened many times within the past month.

Edit: I think a good example is my match that I played as Shyvana jung, four silver 2 players and one silver 1 on one team, with three gold 5 players on the enemy team. I know this isn't that great of a difference but why is matchmaking putting 3 low golds on one team against all high silvers?

Father HoApr 24, 20182 votes

I'll be honest with you, Silver is probably one of the easiest to climb out because people actually want to climb. The hardest is Diamond 5 due to troll picks (All assassins, AD or AP stuff) because they no longer cares about climbing.

MinecraftforxboxApr 24, 20181 votes

Actually climbing out of Bronze is very easy, because my skill level compared to theirs made it easy to climb out, similar to if you are in silver and you belong in high plat/low diamond. However, when I am consistently getting placed in matches that have smurfs in my games, that skill difference is more than it should be. It is not a difference of silver to gold, but of silver to plat.

Father HoMay 25, 20181 votes

Damn that really sucks... I could duo with you if you want haha