A overlooked impact of smurfing
TLDR. The impact of smurfing players who want to lose is often overlooked in discussion. This is a discussion about that, as well as how I feel It impacts game quality.
Its pretty easy to see the negative experience of having some Diamond + Player come and pub stomp on an alt account. Some are doing it for streams to prove their skill. Some do it to exaggerate their skill by playing in environments they can create click bait Videos with titles like"AP/ON-HIT BUILD ASHE TOP SLEEPER OP!" Others just do it to blow off steam for being stuck. Some folks just like wins and want to collect as many of them as possible.
Who finds it to enjoyable to be in this kind of match besides the smurfs? Now, in practice the % of players in Plat+ Is never going to outweigh the population of Standard MMR Silver-Gold (Population distribution being at its highest values between those two ranks) but the larger the skill gap the more dramatic mismatches become. Many smurfs take the extra effort to obtain accounts below silver MMR accounts. To do so requires playing to lose. To get under the starting MMR range you have to throw Placements intentionally. You might get a Bronze Rank but the MMR match average is often in silver even with a disappointing placement series.
To move down requires losses and I don't see discussions about the impact from when smurfs want to lose, Just the impact of when they play for wins. If some one who smurfs does not want their account to catch up to their MMR then they also have to throw games, to break even. Because players treat Iron as the "bottom" of the ladder not the starting MMR, there is incentive for throwing games to reach rock bottom then do 0 to 100 climbs but 0 is your first placement game and not Iron 4. Starting points the basically the center of the curve not the lower tail.
There is no MM fix for this, If you have people in what's expected to be competitive, playing to lose they will lose. With out behavior that can be located by automated systems and flagged this will just keep happening. You can play for kills over objs and lose games pretty easy. Never group, never push with teams, never aim to close the game out. Just collect as big of a KDA as you can and pretend its X player on your team.
Thoughts?
