Boards›Player Behavior

Why are alternate accounts allowed?

KilikOdagawa·11/24/2015, 8:17:30 AM·6 votes·2,689 views

It's asking to make new players go through hell and making people who try to have legitimacy in their rank suffer through people of a much greater skill level. Can someone at Riot take a few cracks at a reason that can make sense to everyone and not just people with pretty stubborn hidden elos that take a greater number of games to change?

EDIT1: Before people say it, I'm fine with being beaten. I've played the game since before Season 1 was ever a thing to the public and I can take a loss fairly easy. The only thing that makes me see red is unfair matchmaking due to PLAYER action. After a while, you have a general idea of how good your opponents are SUPPOSED to be at a game. But when someone only misses 2 skillshots on an Ezreal (mid) for the full duration of a game without missing a single minion and then wantonly says "Oh this is my other account" I'm suddenly supposed to be okay with it? No. I'm not a stepping stool for you.

63 Comments

Deep Terror Nami11/24/2015, 8:22:38 AM3 votes

They are allowed because there are legitimate reasons to smurf that aren't harmful, and Riot doesn't have an alternative to smurfs so people can do that.

Since it's a F2P game, even if they had a healthy system for legitimate smurfs people could still make toxic smurf accounts anyway.

SmokedAlmonds11/24/2015, 8:53:48 AM2 votes

There are legitimate uses for smurfs, but really there are just not really any effective ways to prevent it since the game is free to play. IP bans are ineffective since most people(at least in the US) have dynamic IP addresses which means they change. So when you ban that IP, not only can they evade it by changing IPs(many cases just requires unplugging your modem for a minute, worst case they can call their ISP) and that banned IP is going to get assigned to someone else in the future. There is also the issue of networks like dorms where 1 person could get an entire network banned.

The only idea to stop smurfing that I have heard that I thought would work is to require people to tie their accounts to their actual identity with something like their SSN. I really don't think that would go over well. I remember when blizzard made their forums use peoples real names instead of their character names and it was one of the most upset and united I have ever seen a gaming community. So I can only imagine what would happen if league started requiring a unique SSN.

Korillo11/24/2015, 2:30:48 PM1 votes

I have 4 accounts.

I play top on one, jungle on one, mid on one and ad on one. Guess what, they don't all start at my ELO, so I'm going to have to smash some games before it starts matching me correctly. Sorry but it happens. What would you like the alternative to be?