How are new players supposed to join this game if everytime they try and play some douche bag with nothing better to do comes in and stomps them?
How is it fair that high elo players can come down into our elo and influence our ladder?
People smurf because it makes their e-peen get bigger.
There's no point in banning something you can't control. If tomorrow Riot banned smurfing, not much would really change, smurfs just wouldn't admit that they're smurfing.
I asked one of my friends who smurf "Why even bother smurfing? Doesn't it ruin the experience for the new players?" And they just said that they need to learn. :P
Smurfs are balanced because their ELO goes up, as they're usually able to win more matches. That way they go up against lvl 30s when they're ~20 sometimes. You're just getting unlucky, that's all.
I hate that too, you can see how it influences ranked if you take a small example. Like a tournament where one is much better than the rest but can join multiple times.
The odds (with ONE smurf matched with) that you get a smurf in your team is 4/9, 5/9 on the opposing team. If you duo that's even less, 3/8 and 5/8 for the opposing team. And if a smurf climbs to for example gold, he stole basically MMR from lower tier players to get there.
guess what. Botting is against the rules. go play crystal scar and 4/5 players on each team will be bots.
making something against the rules wont change anything. its like gun free zones. they still get shot up.
The worst are streamers. They go into lower elo to troll and be funny on steam or refuse to talk to anyone and ignores the game chat for twitch chat
I only smurf to teach new friends to play, and I try to lower my level of play to that of my opponent, since they're usually smurfs though sometimes I just have to try a bit harder to try to nullify their effect on my team. Except the time where I ran into one of the top "Masters" ranked players at lvl 10, I almost killed him once though.
the incentive is there for riot to allow smurf accounts because many people will spend money to level it up quickly or grab the champions they want or their favorite skins.
I have a smurf but I don't use it for ranked. I started it so I can play casually against bots with my GF who is learning the game and loving it!
But I agree somewhat, trolls who smurf just to mess with people deserve a ban.
I'm lvl 28, suddenly, after being offline for over 6 months, I had lots of time to play and gained 11 levels in a matter of weeks. I am very under "experienced" for my level, so I made a smurf account primarily to practice/learn new roles/champs. not to troll anyone.
It's not against the rules, because many pro players do it, and Riot would rather piss low elo players off than high elo ones.
Smurfing isn't encouraged, and they can't police it. It isn't against the rules because there is no way to prove someone is smurfing. Other than people willingly streaming, Riot has no idea who is smurfing. Banning people who say that they are smurfing is an option, but then people just wouldn't say it. They would still do it. Not a great solution.
If they are intentionally trolling with their smurf, then they are breaking several other codes of conduct anyway. If they aren't breaking any other rules, then you shouldn't have any reason to complain at all.
Basically, If they're breaking rules, report them for the appropriate issue. If they're not breaking rules, leave them be. If you're just mad because somebody good beat you in a match and you don't know whether they are an actual smurf, consider that they could just as likely have been practicing in normals really hard to get good, or could just be having a lucky game.
I get how it is wrong but how do you expect RITO to anything about it. You can't use it by e-mail because you can't have two accounts on the same e-mail address. To be honest smurfing will never stop, all we can do is hope that the ratio between fairly placed (matchmaking wise) to smurf increases. If you want to complain about smurfing look at Hearthstone where Rank 20 (equivalent to league's bronze 5) is full of players that have every single card in the game and are playing to tier decks with golden legendaries. I don't want to sound rude but get over how smurfs exist. League's matchmaking is not as bad as some other multiplayer games I've seen.
I don't want to be in your elo.
Riot made me do it.
I can 100% understand that it's obnoxious playing against people vastly more experienced than you, but on the flip side I do see it as a learning experience. Personally I'm not even ranked right now but the majority of the friends I play with are Gold/Platinum (I think two of them are plat, rest are gold) so obviously when I queue up with them I'm facing people way better than myself.
It's frustrating sometimes of course, but I do want to get better as a player and I personally feel that I learn more when I'm at that disadvantage.
The problem with the bronze-plat streams wasn't necessarily that they were smurfs so much as the players had to intentially lose games (and therefore ruin those games for the other players) in order to even get into bronze.
Firstly, we should distinguish two types of smurfing for the up-coming analysis. The first type involves leveling a new account, from 1 to 30. The second one is playing ranked games after you've reached level 30.
Let's first discuss level 1 to 30 smurfing.
Right now the percentage of smurfs on the ladder compared to mains is not large enough to ruin a significant amount of someone's games. Most smurfs are in the level 1-10 region, so the absolute start might be a chain of games in which you are forced to sit back and watch how much more experienced players try to carry their teams. Beyond this level, you're likely to most often face evenly-skilled opponents because your MMR starts adjusting accordingly, and the percentage of smurfs at that level decreases rapidly. In other words, you might get a rough start, but other than that most of your games should be you facing opponents that have roughly the same level of experience and skill as you.
Now let's discuss what you actually mentioned - smurfing in ranked.
I think when you enter ranked, you have officially stated your intention to compete with other players and see how effective your strategies and skills are compared to others. This means learning the game and having fun are suddenly not the only reasons to play the game anymore - otherwise you might as well play normals. When competing with others, winning or losing is irrelevant. Your win rate and amount of games played determine where you end up on the ladder. Now realize what these two factors depend on. Games played depends on how much time you are willing to spend on league - clearly this is not relevant to our analysis about smurfing. Win rate depends on the difference between your "true" skill compared to your "current" skill, which is measured through MMR. So long as you are positively or negatively influencing game, you will get to your "true" MMR - if you play a large enough amount of games. This argument breaks two fallacies: 1. "My teams are bad, thus my MMR is much lower than what I deserve i.e. I am stuck in 'Elo Hell'"; 2. "I am trying to climb the ladder, but high-elo players come down here and prevent that." So long as there's not enough smurfs to make a "lower" MMR actually "high" because there's simply that many high-skill players in there, you will not be negatively impacted on your travels through the ladder. This all stems on the fact that you will benefit just as much from smurfing - or more generally good/bad teammates - as you will lose from it.
The only determining factor on your climb... Is you.
Honestly there's no way for RIOT to know the difference between a player that doing really well versus a smurf account.
all you can do is lose gracefully, hope he climbs out of your elo and that you never meet them ever again.
it is also easier for player who like to play multiple champions to have different accounts for masteries and runes.
Its not against the rules because there's absolutely nothing Riot can do to stop it. They can only discourage streamers from doing it, and that will only stop them from streaming on smurf accounts.
Riot said that it's against the rules and is punishable when discussion Bronze to X streams.... too bad it is total BS and they have nothing that punishes them
I think some people smurf because the ranked system is so f*cked up, its kinda like a second chance to get up again. To be honest ranked is awful. Last season i had a friend who hadnt played for very long, and he won 7 games and was in gold already. 7 games. He got carried, wasnt even good. Yet some people play 300 and cant get out of silver. so sad.
Saturday nights are brutal for smurfing.
I dont think smurfing should be banned, because honestly many smurfs are just people who create a second account with no ill intention of stomping noobs. however I think its a good idea to have a "smurf queue" for those who are smurfs so that they can play against another smurfs rather than with lower level players
Because I don't want to pay server transfer 2 time per week.
