New Player Experience is terrible - Smurfs need to be brought under control

WildEyeHorse··3 votes·1,919 views

Honestly, there are so many bots, toxic people, premades and smufs, the new player experience is terrible. It is pretty obvious that the system cannot detect smurfs so new players are getting driven out the game by these toxic people. Why is Riot doing nothing about it? The new player experience is the most important demographic for the survival of League as a game. Most seasoned players don't care if League dies tomorrow, they will just move on to something else but Riot should care about the hundreds of people being driven out of the game because the new player experience is so bad.

I created an alt on a completely DIFFERENT IP, with a DIFFERENT COMPUTER using a DIFFERENT EMAIL and my games were still SWAMPED with smurfs. I asked players after the game how many were smurfs and 90% admitted to smurfing following an account ban or general smurfing. What is the solution here? What can Riot do to discourage or outright punish smurfs?

My solution would be to ban the "player invite" system until level 30 so that people before level 30 cannot invite other players to join the game. That way it ensures a level of fairness. Also auto-ban any accounts that have an unreasonable number of deaths or bad item perchases.

People may not like that solution but it seems like the only way to ensure that people will not abuse the F2P nature of League and ensures a fairer, more competetive time for everyone.

8 Comments

AeroWaffle4 votes

I created an alt on a completely DIFFERENT IP, with a DIFFERENT COMPUTER using a DIFFERENT EMAIL and my games were still SWAMPED with smurfs.

That still means your were smurfing.

Matchmaking should not be judging smurfs based on IP, hardware, or email. It should be based on how well they play. Because as you demonstrated, you can easily smurf while changing all three of those things.

WildEyeHorse1 votes

No, I deliberately played badly or subpar in order to not allow the system to detect that. I also have several friends who registered as new players just to test my theory (they have never played League before) and they found that the majority of their games were self-admitted smurfs too. So there IS a problem.

Nice try though...

AeroWaffle2 votes

{quoted}

No, I deliberately played badly or subpar in order to not allow the system to detect that. I also have several friends who registered as new players just to test my theory (they have never played League before) and they found that the majority of their games were self-admitted smurfs too. So there IS a problem.

Nice try though...

Let's assume that you're telling the truth that you intentionally played poorly (that's called trolling) to try and fool the smurf detection.

Your solution doesn't fix the problem of smurfs at all. All it would prevent is smurfs joining pre-mades with their friends which normally ensures that they're playing against/with higher leveled players.

So instead of being able to join a pre-made with their friend they instead will be forced to solo queue, as a smurf, until they hit level 30. Increasing the likelihood that they'll be in a match with a legitimate new player.

Auto banning accounts if the account builds poorly or has a high number of deaths is also counter-intuitive to new players, the group of players that are most likely to build poorly or die a lot unintentionally.

5050BS1 votes

Smurfs need to be removed. You can have two+ accounts but should be linked to a main account.

Kovorix1 votes

People start smurfing as they gut frustrated on their mains. Why lose LP on mains because of stupid mechanics/balancing/otherstuff when you can just bash some nerds on an uninteressting account?

Wild Geese1 votes

You propose to stop smurfing by having accounts with too many deaths and bad items be autobanned? I think it'd accomplish the opposite since smurfs generally are stomping on new players, new players who make bad items...

The only real solution at this point is let people buy level 30 accounts from Riot, it could include enough champions to go play ranked in. Basically they need to get the smurfs into their goal right away by any means rather than having them ruin 200 games to get to level 30.

Eunzi1 votes

Nothing can be done about the 'smurfs'...case closed...

EDIT: i take that back! actually something can be done. increase the pace of rank ups.

Unstoppable Monk1 votes

I've done some legwork and it is just as true in NA. In the middle of talking to support about it.

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