The sad thing is there's nothing you can do about it. They join the same game as low ELO players, dominate them, make a new account and continue on. If you're not a high ELO player already, your climb is irrelevant as it won't be based on your skill or capabilities as a player. It's based off of who got the smurf.
I believe that Elo Hell is a thing, but not because of smurfs. It's because of inters. I remember being Bronze for like 50 games and they were among the hardest I've ever had. Like, yea, I know it's easy to stomp on Bronze players but the issue is that you can't stop at stomping. You have to turn their entire team into mush because everyone in the game is either 15/6 or 1/8 anyways. The end result is that climbing out of Bronze as a Silver is harder than climbing out of Silver as a Gold(even it would be easier for the Gold player to climb out of Bronze).
Imo, there's not even that many smurfs in the lower elos. I think the issue stems from the fact that MANY players are vastly better than their rank because they don't play ranked much, so, even though they're not smurfing, they still stomp their enemies hard. Every other match has a player like this in Silver who could very easily be high-gold or low-plat.
Lets take me for example. Ive had zero bad games so far this season. But im Gold4 with a 35% win rate(12wins).
Its embarassing, and its tilting that it has absolutely nothing to do with me myself. These terrible players being placed in Gold are a serious issue. Granted, maybe its my own fault for not playing a champion capable of hard carrying bad players vs Diamond/Plat players pushing through Gold. But its still irritating as hell.
1/ Elo Hell doesnt exist. Google confirmation bias, negativity bias, Dunning Kruger Effect, ELO system. 2/ Smurfs are irrelevant to the climb for a simple reason: they can ALSO be in your team and carry you. Use your memory and remember that you lost some games BECAUSE of smurfs and you won some game THANKS to smurfs. Over a Season of hundreds of ranked, their presence evens out = no impact on your ranking.
Simply our brain is wired to stronger remember bad experiences.
https://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/2018/02/dev-matchmaking-real-talk/
Just witnessed this in clash. Really happy that in Tier IV clash I go against a full team running smurfs, how do I know they're smurfs maybe because they played the bare minimum of ranked games to contend and even looking through their previous seasons they only play a handful of games and then come out and completely dominate over silvers and gold elo players. Super easy to tank your mr over the season because if you don't climb back up a certain rank you'll go almost 4 or 5 different steps lower, so when I go against an Iron 1 player whose outlaning a last season plat player somethings fucked up. I feel yah man I hate smurfs. Why do I get penalized with playing against diamond level smurfs in a silver elo game. "Just carry yourself out, Just carry yourself out, Just outplay that high plat player man and win your games!" I hate this mentality its hard enough trying to wrangle a bunch of silvers together to play somewhat decent enough that you win a game let alone having to slog through an hour long game in which you have no hope of winning.
TLDR:
placements are a contributing factor 1a) placements need to be removed, let players begin where they end.
52% former B3 enemy top vs my 40% new I1 Top 2a) Matchmaking failed.
52% win rate current B2 and Former S3 Enemy Mid Vs our 16% win rate new Iron Mid. 3a) Matchmaking failed here too.
Conclusion: Placements are creating the situation of putting former players in the wrong division which creates a strain on your matchmaking. Players end up with the wildly unfair match his which lead to theories on Smurfing ECT. Remove placements. Address and tighten up your Matmaking.
Edit: based on a ranked solo q game
I think placements at the start of each year is a big contributer. If riot just allowed us to start where we finish each year it would go a long way.
I mean I realize that mach making is Based on MMR. Yet I recently had a match, where I had 3 Iron players, who combined for 31 of 41 of our team deaths.
**Example: Okay we all have bad games. **
Yet, my top layer, who appears to be a newly ranked account faced a former B3 player who this year most likely got the shaft in Placements and was placed in Iron.
And his MMR is most likely at I1. Therefore Riots b.s. MMking put him in my B3 game? And he dominated our Top lamer and why wouldn't he?
This player (Enemy Top), like me is winning at 52% whereas my top layer? Winning at 40%. None of this makes much sense.
Wait there is more!
Riot can you explain how and why your matmaking pits a B2 52% winrate mid vs my mid whose_ win rate is a stunning 16%_? By the way?
That B2 mid laner? He was S3 in the prior season. Another example of how terrible placements are effing the matchmaking.
I no longer want to here the "MMR" system is working. It's not.
Placements need to go.
If it's this bad in low elo I feel really bad for upper ELOs.
No wonder the entire playerbase seem upset, (not speaking for them, just an observation).
Remove placements, let us start where we finish.
Fix matchmaking. It's not working correctly. It's felt off since S9.
I've been saying this for years and this communities smurfers and other ignorant players come out of the woodwork to attack anyone who says smurfing is bad. It feels good to be proven right about this. So good. The fact it's ruining clash now is sad but hopefully a wake up call. Smurfing is wrong and ruins games.
If smurfing is an issue in ranked, why don't they do what they do in Clash. Make it so that you can't play ranked games unless you have a phone # associated with your account before you can play ranked.
Wouldn't that make it harder to create smurf accounts for ranked? Or is ranked really not as "serious" as Clash and shouldn't be taken as seriously?
Actually, it's just because seeding exists and the player-base is changing constantly as new players jump in and old players stop playing (which is what smurfing makes a bit worse, but smurfing isn't so prevalent that it would be entirely the cause of elo hell). Some people get seeded high, and others get seeded low, so people that belong somewhere near the middle of the ladder will find it extremely difficult to climb. A GM player that can solo carry games up through gold or whatever relatively easily isn't going to have an issue, but even a plat player could have some struggles climbing if they get some bad luck.
Those players with less than 100 games? They're probably not even that close to where they should be on ladder. It can take up to 1000 games or so to reach the correct position on ladder in a game like league for people that don't belong towards the top or bottom.
Leavers/inters creating bad experiences and ruining games can be a bigger factor in making games at lower ELOs a bit more coin-flippy even for highly skilled players. Unless you're drastically better than where you are (and thus losing very few games), there is a lot of luck involved in climbing, since you WILL get strings of wins/losses, and the way ELO systems calculate those make the losing streaks really punishing if you have a positive win rate.
No, Elo hell exists because game knowledge differences are staggering.
A game like this has no way of pairing players of actual equal skill so it only goes by wins and losses, which is extremely poor in terms of player differences.
A silver 2 player can know perfect positioning and ward placement, but still lose the game because two other players overextend their lane all game long and give 6 kills to the enemy jungler.
Smurfs do matter. But their role matters more.
Mid lane smurf, bot lane smurfs are going to be more relevant than a top lane or a jungle smurf. If i match vs bot lane smurfs as a jungle main in Gold4 right now, im going to walk into mid game with atleast 5 kills or assists, im going to shutdown their jungler and put him down two levels. But my success is irrelevant compared to the 8-0 enemy ADC or mid laner and even if i completely shutdown a solo lane or the jungler its not going to matter if their bot lane or mid lane is a smurf, they will carry harder than i can as a jungler and eventually i will just have to submit to their stronger role.
I guess this could be blamed on me for not choosing a role that can carry my teamates, but i feel like all roles should carry the same weight. However they dont.
as it won't be based on your skill or capabilities as a player. It's based off of who got the smurf
So what you're saying is its based off who gets the more skilled player?
[sg-lux-2]
