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@Reds -The issue with smurfs.

ManicRomantic·8/5/2014, 10:49:28 PM·12 votes·2,632 views

Dear Rito, I have been playing our amazing game since beta on numerous accounts (many smurfs myself), and as I have been playing I have noticed a serious problem concerning newcomers to League of Legends. Smurfs. A lot of times when people try LoL for the first time they experience being obliterated by people on Smurf accounts. They then end up believing that they are bad at the game, and when they start to believe this they either give up and stop playing the game, or they keep trying to play the game getting smashed on some more. That's never fun.

               If they end up deciding to brave the smurfs and trolls it ends up one of two ways, The first being they end up doing decent and enjoy the game (This mainly happens if they have IRL friends to play with) The second being they just get raged at by their team and start hating the game while wanting to do well. Seeing as the smurfs keep decimating them, they start to get angry and fighting, ignoring everyone and thus it adds too the toxicity of our community. I have tried on various occasions throughout the last few years too get friends into the game. Yet if i can't play with them to help them learn then they mostly end up quitting saying "it's too hard" or "it's not any fun." 

              At first I could not fathom this many people not liking this game i have loved for years.. I began to wonder what it is that made it so hard for them. So i started to watch these games and noticed a lot of times they are going against 2-3 smurfs on the enemy team with 1-3 on their own.(i know mainly from the names "SmurfTooStronk" "SmurfNTurf" just as examples) Yet the ones on their team just rage at them and don't try to help them learn. As gamers we all know that if we play a game for the first time and go against people who have been playing for years we will most likely be upset that they are just smashing us and we have no chance at winning. People hate to lose. I am not saying every game is full of smurfs, yet a lot of levels 1-15 have smurfs. After 15 it seems the smurfs tend to go back to their main accounts (at least from what i have seen). Yet i honestly believe we need to at least try and address it.  Maybe we should start by trying to figure out why people smurf? I know for me and my friends it is mainly three reasons. 1) A new buddy joins the game so we make a low level to help carry him against other smurfs. or 2) They get mad at being in Bronze/silver and make a new account to try and hit 30 on to pretty much reset their MMR. 3) (I hate to admit that i have done this.) They want to win, even at the expense of making newcomers hate the game. Maybe there are some other reasons that i can't think of at this moment, just throwing things out there. 

               Why should we care about a newcomers experience? I for one want to share the game I love. I also want to see Rito succeed! Both of these goals can be achieved by perfecting a newcomers experience with the League of ![Draven](https://ddragon.leagueoflegends.com/cdn/16.16.1/img/champion/Draven.png) ... I mean Legends.  They'll win some and lose some, but may not be predisposed to toxicity for their ignorance.

              So how can we Fix the issue for newcomers? Well the whole reason you start off at level 1 is to learn the game. Once you hit 30 you know a lot about it in comparison to level 1. So I thought of maybe making it so each account that is ranked already can have one additional account starting at thirty. One problem with this is That it would not work as they could just give that additional account to newcomers. What we can do is tie the additional account to current accounts email, and only one can be logged into at once.  I'm sure we can find other solutions if not this one:) If there is no solution so be it, just thought i would say what i have noticed(:

I know smurfs are not the only issue for newcomers, they will win some and lose some yet a lot of their overwhelming losses are from smurfs decimating them.

                                                                    - sincerely yours your average gamer

Edit:: As a friend just pointed out. Some high elo players who want more accounts in plat-diamond do make new accounts. That right there would hurt. Imagine being new and going against diamond players. It is not the fault of those people that they have to have a new account to accomplish this, yet it happens.

I think this song can go along with this pretty well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxAabW7JfTQ

38 Comments

Drunk Old Man8/6/2014, 4:04:34 AM7 votes

Hmm.. I have a low level account (like, level 5) I made to play with friends who were new to the game. Unfortunately, after winning two or three games, we were put against people who admitted that they were Diamond/Challenger mains (even linked their streams) and it instantly stopped being fun (thus why I stick to my main account now)

When I created the account, I honestly had no idea that these people were making these accounts simply to play against low-tier players and dominate games, but it's actually a growing occurrence, and that is absolutely not a good thing. I can fully understand wanting to play with your low-level friends and teach them to play the game (I simply play in bots with them now, with an empty rune/mastery page), but playing against new players purposely is just down-right sad. I experienced this as well back when I played games like Conquer Online and WoW, where people would smurf and go to PvP events just to take all the low-level rewards for practically free. And, sadly, that's exactly what's happening in low elo ranked play. There's countless people in low elo who I've seen go up against these Diamond/Challenger players and get absolutely destroyed, and they ended up questioning their skills in the game (which is sad, considering their MMR in normals was Gold and above.) And all the high-elo players have to say about it, is that it's "fun".

I completely understand people who do it for educational purposes (like ImpaKt for example, who was perma-banned yesterday for showing people how to carry themselves as a support main, ironically enough), but all these streamers on Twitch who do it in plain sight are never seen getting punished. These players that play in LCS constantly, and have 5+ smurf accounts that they play for the hell of it, but it's blatantly ignored. I'm just curious as to why there's a bit of a favorites game being played here. If you're going to ban the educational streamers, ban the LCS players who only play for profit and not teaching. I'm not saying they all play for those reasons, but quite a few do.

The unfortunate part is that I highly doubt this will be discussed by Reds in a public fashion (for some understandable reasons, and some trivial ones)

Edit: Let me also note that I started playing back in beta, and actually achieved Platinum in season 1 maining ADC/Mid (arguably not nearly as hard as it is now, by any means) and ended up dumping my account and quitting the game for over two years due to the attitudes that high-elo players had towards low-elo players. Smurfing was a huge problem even then, but what it's grown to be now is something that contributes more than anything to the toxicity of the community in ranked play.

Zyorhist8/6/2014, 7:28:30 PM5 votes

Some time ago, and by some time ago I mean anytime in the last 3-4 years, I came across an idea that seemed really good at the time, and I'm not sure why it wasn't seriously looked at. The idea was basically a mentor system where players que up with the intent of teaching and helping lower level players. This would be beneficial in the aspect of not having to create a smurf to help out a buddy or you could just go in with the intent of helping some new player learn the game and maybe make a friend along the way. This would help in the aspect of new players would use the que system and get help whereas smurfs trying to get higher would just que up solo or with their co-smurfs to advance. This would effectively separate the issues from one another and also allow players the opportunity to help create and mold newer players so that they become more skilled faster.

Being as LoL is so very different from any other game type out there I honestly think it would be much more helpful to have a coaching/mentoring system of some kind out there to allow players the discretionary option of queuing to play or queuing to teach.

Two Oh Nine8/5/2014, 11:16:24 PM5 votes

Right! so another way to make it better for people joining (which we should ALL want to do), would be to have some kind of addendum that would allow players to see commonly used terms and abbreviations!

Ex. "Gank" "PD" "IE" "Focus" "Camped" "CDR"

And probably like another tutorial once the newcomer meets a certain level, like a video tutorial unlocked at level 7 about the threes map and various tactics! then one at level 10 or so, about more in depth tactics for fives, once these tutorials are unlocked they are forced to watch it once, then may watch it again if they so choose:) This would help newbies understand in ways they didnt before which would probably then captivate them, making them want to try these new things they learned! EPIC IDEAS w0000t

Its time to make this newcoming community less ignorant of the game they are playing. Give them the tools they need to improve so that they don't experience the bad side of our community! Also, for the sake of our more experienced community put player levels, so people can sympathize rather than rage?

Worgslarg8/6/2014, 1:25:50 AM4 votes

You forgot another reason some people make smurfs. while this mainly applies to high level play, people become recognized on their mains, and want to play league without the risk of being trolled because people know who they are.

Hoi Im Temmo8/6/2014, 2:16:26 AM3 votes

I hateto say this: but i can say for a fact that a few smurfs only smurf.....because they enjoy smashing the new players. For some, its not about winning - its about beating the crap out of another player; for them, its like playing bots that respond and rage, and they get enjoyment out of it.

STĄN LOONA8/5/2014, 11:53:04 PM3 votes

It would be great if we could get a red to read this... The post and all of the comments hold truly great ideas! I have friends who I try really hard to get them to play, but they get scared off by people who are better than them; smurfs or otherwise.

Konanni868/5/2014, 11:03:31 PM3 votes

I could most definitely see this suggestion working to an extent. Another system to reference the multiple accounts-to-email scenario is how Blizzard handles multiple World of Warcraft licenses on a single Battle.Net account. When signing in, you choose the license you want to log into and you're still tied to the same Battle.Net account at the same time, which would link your friends to your other accounts as well.

I've not really thought it out THAT much, but I feel like there might be ways to exploit or use this in malicious ways.

JimmynatorB8/6/2014, 11:33:10 PM2 votes

Reason 4: being banned in your main account, or being toxic without having to lose your main account.

The other day I got a teammate in ranked who said he was a smurf. His name was something like SoloTopMaokai. He was last pick, picked Maokai when there was already a Riven and refused to go top saying "I don't care if I get banned, I'm a smurf". He lost his lane and me (Riven) couldn't do much as I hadn't ever played jungle Riven, thus we lost the game.

The most awful thing about smurfs is that they circumvent bans. This is something I really hate, mostly with people telling us that they don't care if they get banned because they will just make another account.

Two Oh Nine8/5/2014, 10:55:36 PM2 votes

First comment, and all I say is Preach it brother! i am trying to not be so toxic, honestly, but it's a habit i picked up from early levels of gameplay. Granted i did stupid things concerning builds, and decisions such as focusing tanks xD... but the people that raged were smurfs, saying terms i didnt even know and so the toxicity was then instilled into me and now i sometimes rage at people, but its from my early influence with the game..

Two Oh Nine8/6/2014, 9:24:03 PM2 votes

I came back hoping there would be some red activity:/ but of course not, they like to comment on meaningless posts using puns...

Zyorhist8/25/2014, 6:09:35 PM1 votes

i can't believe this thread died to quickly. I would like to see more people putting their views on here.

Groovy Joe8/6/2014, 9:47:01 AM1 votes

DetroitRocCity, if u see him/her in game, is to be muted without question. A smurf with an attitude problem and an intense amount of toxicity towards players. Just fyi... the foulness that spewed across chat had to of either come from a young kid first learning to curse or a very bitter sailor. Either way save urself some griefing.

GG Beers8/6/2014, 3:00:36 PM1 votes

You don't notice this stuff unless you're a smurf yourself. I've had 5 or 6 of my friends start this game after me and I've talked to them all about smurfs and getting destroyed early on.

Fact is the game does a good job of splitting smurfs off from real noobs really fast, by level 5 or so which is just a few games. New players don't pay attention to chat when the first start and fully expect to get destroyed as we all do when we try a new PvP game for the first time.

None of my friends said the had a hard time or got raged on.

You really just notice it when you play on a smurf because you get stuck with all the other smurfs.

Zyorhist8/7/2014, 5:30:31 PM1 votes

Last night I came up with an idea, and so far it seems to have worked. At the start of every game I have been saying the following,

"/all I hereby issue a challenge to all of the players in this match..." "/all the challenge is, win or lose, to find reason to honor an ally and an enemy"

some people think I'm crazy but I know that the honor has been thrown more at the end of those matches, which is a player's way of saying "Thank you for what you do"