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Smurfing, and why it should be removed.

Love4All·2/7/2016, 11:32:08 PM·5 votes·1,113 views

Best analogy for smurfing is wrestling. If a 300 pound man entered a competition stating his weight was 140 he'd be banned no questions asked. How is this any different for esports? Not to mention splitting hairs between smurfing and boosting. One is bannable, the other isn't? talk about being hard to regulate: it's because they can't make up their minds. There are plenty of reasons to ban smurfs, and one really Really big one to keep them around: money. If a diamond lee main makes a smurf, he's going to buy at least 1 lee skin. It's going to happen, and even if it only happens a small percentage of the time, that's more money for RIOT. Let's not pretend that this has nothing to do with why it's never come up. FACT: a smurf ruins each game they play for not just 1 person, but 9, in one way or another. For the 5 players desperately trying to deal with their disproportional skill level, they learn nothing from getting trounced so hard they can't react, regardless of how many replays they watch. For the 4 players who got placed with them, they get a bump to their elo and LP that they may or may not deserve, keeping that silver 3 player from demoting to silver 4 where they will be placed with players more their level that they can more gradually learn to play against. The argument that smurfs only affect 10 games or so on their way is bogus, because that's 10 games PER SMURF and there are very likely tens of thousands of them in existence, so the likelihood that you won't get at least 1 in a game of 10 people is just tiny. Smurfs: they're only fun when they're on your team, and that should not be the state of the ranked system if it is to have any seriousness as a competitive platform.

9 Comments

Grashnim2/7/2016, 11:35:22 PM5 votes

Multiple accounts = more cash from one person. More cash = more profits. More profits = company making money. Ultimately, cash is king. Hail to the king baby.

xl Kirito lx2/8/2016, 1:01:52 AM3 votes

Paragraphs, please. Such a wall of text.

This wouldn't be because you're Silver 4, at a 28% win rate, would it? And that you're just annoyed about the mmr reset?

We'll assume it isn't. First of all, for a cash grab idea, it's a really bad one. Why wouldn't Riot just sell level 30 accounts at that point? Botted accounts are 30$-, Riot could sell for 40$ and make a pretty good profit. Then whatever bonus they made off of skin sales would just add on. Riot could do a lot better for a cash grab.

As for ranked, assuming that people use smurfs to play ranked and ruin others people games. There's still 9 other people in the game. Just because a person is Diamond, doesn't mean that they auto-win. I've lost to bronze, and beaten challenger players before. Just because someone is a higher mmr, doesn't mean they have a boost. They have all the same runes, same masteries as you.

Realistically, you can't tell the difference between a smurf and a regular player in ranked. Just because they outplayed you doesn't mean that they're smurfs. Just because they won lane doesn't mean that they're smurfs.

Weathered2/8/2016, 1:03:11 AM2 votes

And how to prevent it? ._.

DeathBurst2/8/2016, 3:53:01 AM2 votes

Smurfing is a real issue. And you won't solve it with this kind of thread where you assume from the start that Riot has bad intentions.

There are many reasons to smurf, and you won't get rid of the problem if you don't solve the root.

A little Peepo2/8/2016, 1:30:16 AM1 votes

Rammus