Boards›Player Behavior

Smurfing and the community.

Chimera747·5/4/2016, 6:26:43 PM·0 votes·213 views

I recently just got a few friends into LoL. During their time in solo/partyq, they kept pointing out the hostility of the community, how they're matched against others who are obviously higher in skill. They did choose the absolute beginners path in regards to skill match-ups, but each game is plagued with people boasting, being absolutely bm and flaming others for being nooby. Granted this may just be the demographic of early level LoL, but it's incredibly toxic and ridiculously hateful towards newer players. Their are some people who don't match this description, and it could just be bad luck with matchups, but it just seems like its populated with people who are looking to boost their ego. Is the experience just relative? Or is it emphasizing playing bots before being comfortable enough to play against other people? Or is it that when people "smurf" they just want to boost their accounts to 30 asap, enjoying the difference in play style and putting newer players in a "Trial by Fire" kind of situation? Any thoughts?

3 Comments

AraMoOse5/4/2016, 6:37:58 PM2 votes

I just want to throw into the conversation that the problem you are denouncing isn't "Smurfing". The problem is the attitude and the BM.

I'm not trying to deny what you've observed. I'm currently leveling up a smurf so I can have a ranked account for jungle/top and I've seen plenty of people who are obviously smurfs raging at people. So it's real : There ARE smurfs being extremely toxic in low levels.

   But I want to re emphasize that the problem is the toxicity, not the smurfism. This is easy to demonstrate by the following observations :

a. There are smurfs who are super cool and helpful and make the game more fun. b. There are toxic people who are not smurfs.

     I agree with you that something should be done as it seems a clear barrier to new arrivals into the community. But let's be careful to address the actual problem, and not just attack an entire demographic because of some idiots. Let's focus on the idiots.

      I also think you should get me some coffee. I'll be in my office.
Dukues5/4/2016, 6:29:34 PM1 votes

smurfing and low level accounts has always been a problem. Riot has never addressed it and at this point I doubt they will. From leveling up a couple accounts myself I can say that after you play a few games smurfs generally get matched up with mostly smurfs and new players play with more newer players. Smurfs are going to win most of their early games and therefore the system matches them together. New players on average will lose more and therefore play each other more.