Boards›[ARCHIVED] Miscellaneous

Ask Riot: Why we condone smurfing

Inquisitor Kane·7/11/2017, 4:58:33 PM·7 votes·1,438 views
Ask Riot: Poro King Again? - Nexus - League of Legends

Hello fellas, after some pause I came back and immediately I found this gem of an article. Ghostcrawler, despite I like the guy and I am sure he was forced to give an answer... but he outdone himself this time. Blatantly telling us BS to shut up while even he has to know it's a lie. Don't get me wrong - I understand he had to say why smurfing is good, because he was told by big wigs and he can't do anything about it. But it's still a bunch of BS that needs to be addressed.

Once again - I know Ghostcrawler had to pull an answer out of his arse and I am sure he felt bad openly talking sh*t (isn't that the reason he left Blizz in the first place?). But you do as those who pay you says... :(

These are 3 "valid reasons" why Riot is OK with smurfs:

  1. I want to play with a friend of a different skill level. League places a lot of restrictions on how I can do this, so it’s easier just to make a new account.

So high elo player wants to play with a low elo friend. Why does he need smurf for? There is this thing called normal draft... or blind pick... no need for smurf. Smurfing dia player with bronze friend will not only have boring games where he always goes 35/2/1, he can also fck up promos for low elo players and worst of it all - he will boost his bronze friend into gold and then this poor sod can't play rankeds anymore because boosted bronze will fall down to bronze within few games. So what good can come out of it? I see only downsides.

  1. I want to try out a new champion or role without the risk that I will tank my ELO.

Normal draft or Blind pick... hello? Anybody ever heard about those ancient modes? Those are for fun and practice. And don't give me that BS about how ppl don't care in normal draft. They sometimes care more than in rankeds. Also if you wanna practice, those games are good enough. And if you are OK with that champ, play in ranked. Easy.

  1. I’m stuck at the steep curve of climbing through ranks or champion mastery or whatever, and I miss that time when progression came really quickly.

A.k.a. "I hit my skill ceiling so instead of working on my flaws I need to unwind by stomping low elo noobs." 100% legit reason for smurfing, right?

I know Riot is OK with smurfing, because smurfs buys EXP Boosts and it's a solid income for the company.

I just wonder why they can't just say it out loud. Riot Games is the only company in the world that silently condone smurfing and elo boost (and openly never does anything against it). Every other company deals with elo boosting and smurfing within days.

Divisions under Diamond 2 are a joke and from about 100 people in my friend list there are only about 20 that are where they are because of their real skill.

Fun fact: before, they said anything Diamond 3 or over is good, now my high elo friends moved it into Diamond 2. I wonder, if in 2 years Diamond tier becomes also a dump of boosted players and people will say that only Masters and Challengers are where they are because of skill.

#The last season with people being where they belong (most of them) and when divisions actually meant something was Season 3 and partially 4.

Thanks for reading this, have a nice day :-)

-IK-

12 Comments

Kloqdq7/11/2017, 5:05:52 PM6 votes

I wish they would just suck it up and change it. People that smurf are either people that need another account in high elo to help avoid long queues and have back ups just in case. The other kind of people are the ones that just want to smash low elo players.

I suggested this before but an account link feature to create another account and get it into your main's ELO would remove the people that want a smurf for legit reasons and still help push people from the grind of smurfing to somewhere else.

Tormentula7/11/2017, 6:39:41 PM3 votes

[{quoted}](name=Inquisitor Kane,realm=EUNE,application-id=cIfEodbz,discussion-id=jYdwrZiG,comment-id=,timestamp=2017-07-11T16:58:33.972+0000)

So high elo player wants to play with a low elo friend. Why does he need smurf for? There is this thing called normal draft... or blind pick... no need for smurf. Smurfing dia player with bronze friend will not only have boring games where he always goes 35/2/1, he can also fck up promos for low elo players and worst of it all - he will boost his bronze friend into gold and then this poor sod can't play rankeds anymore because boosted bronze will fall down to bronze within few games. So what good can come out of it? I see only downsides.

Personally, I can name a few good reasons. I play with friends who are all bronze/silver and I'm diamond 5, I'm also that guy that uses lolskill in norms, and I can tell you as a duo q with me being diamond and my partner being silver, we 90% of the time get him matched against all plats and diamonds in normals (or rarely we just go in duo q against a 5 man that's gold and communicating)

In ranked queue, the issue is not being able to play at all due to rank brackets, in norms the MMR makes their experience more hell and makes yours just as hell carrying them.

I personally don't have a smurf (well I do.. but its been level 7 for the past 2 years cause I'm lazy) but if I have any reason to outside just having a pure one trick account or to play on a different region without transferring its partly because of the normals mmr issue.

Normal draft or Blind pick... hello? Anybody ever heard about those ancient modes? Those are for fun and practice. And don't give me that BS about how ppl don't care in normal draft. They sometimes care more than in rankeds. Also if you wanna practice, those games are good enough. And if you are OK with that champ, play in ranked. Easy.

A.k.a. "I hit my skill ceiling so instead of working on my flaws I need to unwind by stomping low elo noobs." 100% legit reason for smurfing, right?

Normals don't really teach you anything. I'm level 7 on a lot of the junglers in this game, and I can only play 2 or 3 of them in solo queue ranked reliably. In norms, me going 13-0 is just giving me false confidence to go 0-13 on xin or yi in ranked. Its best to practice champions in ranked where all players are trying at their highest skill rating otherwise you might as well include using bots to learn champions. I'd say the best thing to do right now wouldn't be to smurf but rather just use flex queue for this sorta thing, its honestly like a separate ranked queue for you to mess around in but people try decently enough to learn from it.

Reaching your skill ceiling isn't bad, and sometimes its just boring. A lot of people don't want to climb any high (I could've been plat last season, but stopped gold 5 0lp, and this season I stopped playing ranked at diamond 5 but I'm slowly climbing on 1 game a week to stop mmr drop) and because of this, some want to see progression again for their own or other's entertainment. Granted it may seem unfair with the match making, but regardless is adds to the same argument for feeders or afks on your team: its a 50/50 either you or the enemy will get them.

Divisions under Diamond 2 are a joke and from about 100 people in my friend list there are only about 20 that are where they are because of their real skill.

What does this have to do with smurfing? Like I said, some people just don't care. I solo ranked climbed to diamond 5 and I'm personally proud of myself for that, and I simply don't care to overachieve what any league player probably dreamed of when they jumped into ranked. I feel being stereotypically insulted that I should be automatically called a boosted monkey for being D5 (yes there's a skillgate between D3 and D4 but diamond doesn't mean you're shit like you claim its just turning into the dumpster elo). Believe me, if that person is boosted and played in diamond elo more than a week then they should be dropped by then, if not maybe they really are fine in that rating until they get banned for boosting, you still have to respect that diamond is, no if buts or maybes, a top percentage rating and its populated, d5-d1, by some of the best. Its also worth mentioning anybody above a particular rating would call what's below them dumpster, because that's exactly what they view anything below their own skill.

#The last season with people being where they belong (most of them) and when divisions actually meant something was Season 3 and partially 4.

Yea I can't argue there, ranked isn't what it used to be and the community hasn't been kind to it either, you're either automatically bronze trash or you're automatically assumed boosted if you're any higher. I can't find a pants are dragon video, a challenger player, without him being called boosted in a serious manner, I personally don't watch him but that's just an example.

ZT Xperimentor7/11/2017, 8:13:32 PM1 votes

Cashola, what else was there to be expected with such a massive company? I miss the days when they actually cared about player experience, instead of fans watching.

No flash no life7/11/2017, 8:50:34 PM1 votes

Not gonna lie, I smurf, and I'll take all the spit I deserve, but even then I'm still going to be at it for selfish reasons explained below.

There's this thing, it's called ultra rapid fire, and I love it. But then I took an arrow in the knee riot thought it's ok to take it off the altar and replace it with arurf and convince us it's same thing when, well, a rock doesn't hold the value of a gold even if they happen to weigh the same.

Since then I could spam hundreds a game and literally have 0 chance of playing the champion I want (note that even if I miraculously get a decent champ someone in champ select would suddenly feel a helpless urge to dodge). After a while, I had to admit that if I want even just 1% chance of getting something I want to play, I will have to make a new account and buy only the champions I wish to play, and with enough rolls stocked up from playing aram, gambling on the chance that I won't get free rotation ones, and pretending I'm a hot girl irl so my teammates will feel less inclined to click the x button, I might just make that one game or two happen.

So yes, I'm evil, and I'm sorry varus with the item 3077 and the item 3089 Warwick, I shouldn't have been in your game, and I'm well aware I'm doing bad things for my own benefit without concern of others ( ' _/_ ' )

Rand0mH3r0X7/13/2017, 12:25:09 PM1 votes

Riot doesn't do much to stop the creation of new accounts. Account creation is pretty much unregulated. Riot would prefer to go after players who abuse the system rather than those who make new accounts.

I would personally prefer they disallowed smurphs to que with lower elo account. Like if after 5 games the MMR rating goes to 1400 and the duo partner is at 700, lock that smurph for 10 games to play by himself to see if the elo goes up or down.

I don't know, something like that is really complicated so I can understand Riot not wanting to take a good look at it.