Smurphing makes weekend bronze impossible

ijRT3seLyg·3/8/2015, 3:12:44 PM·5 votes·1,335 views

(In case you are unaware: Smurphing is the term used when a higher ranked player is playing on a low ranked account)

I can only rank up during the week, yet amazingly on the weekends when all the streamers are out and about I get knocked all the way back down to B5. Ranked is for just that, ranked play. Please removed highly ranked players out of low rank play; it's that simple.

Yes people want to play with there low ranked friends, yes streamers want to make crazy awesome videos of them smashing the shit out of paper targets. However I would say that Riot is losing far more money from lower ranked players who quit over this and have no reason to spend a dime on RP than any gains they get.

How to do it?

add a report button for it, then do IP tracking. Between those two data-points it will be obvious who is Smurphing, more often than not the chat logs will also reveal it.

17 Comments

rth23/8/2015, 3:34:15 PM5 votes

I'm not sure if you actually mean smurfing. Most smurfs, when they make a new account and start ranked, do not start at Bronze 5. They also cannot consistently win/stomp people and remain at Bronze 5. Also, if someone plays with their low ranked friend, it takes their MMR, gets an average, and the enemy team, on a whole, will be higher ranked than the lower ranked person of the duo Q, making it harder to duo Queue if you have a significant skill gap. You can also only have a 1 tier difference when duo queueing in ranked.

Let's assume that somebody takes the time to make a new level 30 account and duo with a Bronze 5 friend. If they consistently win, both of their MMR's will go up. This will make them play against increasingly tougher opponents (the smurf will have a higher MMR to begin with as they would not have lost their way to B5). These opponents will quickly outpace the B5 player who is being carried, making a huge handicap for their team. So the smurfing player would have to be strong enough to carry his own team (who may have other potentially unskilled players) against a team that will be more skilled than his B5 counterpart, and will get fed off of him. They also have to do this without raising 1 tier ahead of their friend. This would take a long time.

I don't think this happens too often. Friends do duo to get out of bronze, but that is fine. Duo queueing is limited to 1 tier difference. I think the bigger issue is when people get boosted (have somebody else play on their account to get them to a certain tier/division). Boosting is against the rules though and people do get banned for it.

Big Bang Bob3/8/2015, 6:20:10 PM2 votes

People are actually good when they say they're smurfing? And who would go through the ages it can take to get a level 30 account just to play bronze?

What if I'm just good or lucky? Then I could be in trouble because I steamrolled a few games and won a decent amount in others, which kinda solves itself if I am smurfing, because I'll rank up appropriately or be gone because I have to feed to stay bronze or silver, which will get me reported.

Maybe if someone plays oddly well, you could report them, and they gain a bit of LP or whatever. This helps high ranked players who get unlucky and shot to bronze/silver while keeping them out of low ranked play where they stomp.

LG antimon3/8/2015, 3:15:34 PM2 votes

riot forbid elo boosting, not smurfing...

Hirok03/8/2015, 5:23:33 PM1 votes

Smurfing is when you play on another account for whatever reason. For example... I have a two accounts:

Normal/Ranked 5v5 and 3v3, with occasional ARAM/Bot for the hell of it. Its my 'main' and actually has skins. This guy gives sincere effort because its my main.
Smurf account just meant for ARAM, but does Bot/Normal occasionally, and once in a blue moon ranked with noob friends which is almost always defeat anyway. This guy is liable to do obviously bad stuff like jungle. (that didn't work well, but we won by fluke)

SmokingPuffin3/8/2015, 6:32:31 PM1 votes

The odds are approximately equal that there is a smurf on the enemy team or a smurf on your team.

Would not recommend blaming smurfs for why you aren't climbing.

The Fat Punisher3/8/2015, 6:35:46 PM1 votes

smurfs have a 4/10 chance of ending up on your team. and a 5/10 chance to end up on the enemy team. so don't give me that math bullshit that it's fair.

warpenguin5553/8/2015, 3:16:06 PM1 votes

ya, they always seem to end up on the other team

Kam9133/8/2015, 4:35:40 PM1 votes

Going against higher elo players can make you better just pay attention to what they do. I don't even play ranked anymore because its just so hard to get out of bronze even though I have a silver mrr in normals