Boards›Player Behavior

Can We PLEASE Deal With Smurfing in Ranked Now!

IainG10·2/15/2019, 3:24:54 PM·17 votes·13,053 views

Before anyone decides to add this in the comments, yes this is partially a rage post; but it's one I've been meaning to put up for a while now, and the last game was just the final straw that got me off my lazy ass.

This post is also going into Player Behaviour rather than Gameplay because this is at heart an issue not about the actual gameplay of the game, but players deciding to ruin the experiences of other players, intentionally or otherwise.

Smurfing is one of the big things ruining Ranked, and has been for a very long time. It breaks the very idea of Ranked, which is to pit you against people of your own approximate skill level (Autofill also broke this, but Positional Ranking, once the kinks are worked out, should fix that issue...). The Ranked system is even coded to not let people of highly disparate ranks into the same game...

So why is there no system what-so-ever for dealing with Smurfs? Certainly, it wouldn't be an easy system to design and implement, but to have no system to stop high Diamonds rampaging through mid Silver is just pathetic. If Smurfs were rare, like 1/20 games rare, then maybe it could be safely ignored; but they aren't. Averaged out (because you sometimes get more than one per game), in mid Silver, I probably see one every 3-4 games (and that's with me playing mostly well outside of peak times).

In the last 2 games I played (at the time of writing this) I saw 3 Smurfs; a Lee smurf on my team in the first one, and a different Lee Smurf along with a Zed Smurf on the enemy team in the second. The first Lee was arrogant and toxic, and spent the entire game chasing kills to get a good score, rather than focusing objectives in order to win (he left drake 3 separate times to chase a Raka or Jinx under their tower). The second game was even less fun, because the system matched their 'Level 44' Lee and 'Level 32' Zed with an actual Level 35 Jax and an actual Level 30 Darius. Darius and Jax managed a combined 0/7/0; Lee and Zed a combined 14/0/2, and we surrendered at 15 minutes. How is that fun? And how are people meant to climb, if the only barrier to people doing this kind of thing is the time it takes to make a new account and play what is it, 5 bot games?

Now, this is an issue I cannot confirm I've seen (because it's far harder to spot), but some Smurfs (not all, some want to climb their second/third/xth account) want to stay down in the lower Ranks, and come to let off steam by absolutely annihilating other players. Now, if you constantly win you climb, so in order to stay in the lower Ranks, these Smurfs then throw games in order to remain LP neutral. It doesn't have to be running down mid, it can be far more subtle, like just repeatedly taking stupid engages that are never going to work, or bot-like split pushing as the rest of their team gets wiped by repeated 5v4 enemy engages. As I said, not easy to spot, and completely unfair on the other 4 members of their team. The biggest problem with these is that I can't come up with any way to detect it that's realistically feasible; you'd have to examine their playstyles each game taking into account champion type, role, position etc, and right now machine learning isn't advanced enough for that, and that's just too many people to hire and pay.

So taking the issue of intentional throwers off the table, we're still left with the people playing at Diamond/Plat level with and against Silvers and Bronzes. It doesn't matter which side the Smurf is on in terms of fun; you're either clearly being carried and end up feeling more like a minion than a champion (an unneeded bag of gold waiting to be popped), or you're being farmed into the ground by someone that you can realistically do nothing against (sure you can 5v1 them and burn all your cooldowns, but then there's those other 4 people who may still be tough fights at the best of times..., and that's assuming the 5v1 doesn't become a 1v5...). And then you have the added issue of the LP losses; as it currently stands (and as far as Riot are willing to say) LP changes are based mainly on streak; the longer the win/loss streak the greater the LP gain/loss. In summary, Smurfing is allowing 1 player to possibly have fun whilst denying fun for 9 others, and is throwing the Ranking system into confusion.

So, the fixes. They aren't pretty or elegant or perfect, but they would at least do something positive. They are suggestions for a starting point, not finalised implementable plans; I am not a game designer; but I am certain that many of us here on the Boards, and many more outside of them have FAR more experience of being on the receiving end of LoL game design than most of the Devs at this point. I'd rather see all Surfs banned from Ranked, but that'll never happen, so:

  1. Get the Smurfs that want to climb out of the lower Ranks as fast as possible: Riot currently holds the idea that those who are better WILL climb, and this is generally true (see Intentional Throwers above). However, currently it is nowhere near fast enough, and the Smurf wrecks a large amount of games in the process. The solution is to leave Placements as they are, and have a grace period of maybe 5-10 games, and then REALLY ramp up the LP gains of win streaks at higher streak counts. So say a Smurf has placed into B1, and give them 5 games of normal LP gain (just in case Placements got it wrong; statistically 10 games across all potential Ranks is not overly precise); after that, if they are still on a streak, increase the LP gains by maybe 10 per additional win beyond 3-4 games in a streak. This should be enough that the average player in an accurate Rank should rarely if ever benefit from this system, but people dead set on climbing will rapidly leave Ranks they have already far surpassed.

  2. Mitigate the effects of Smurfs whilst they climb: as it currently stands, if a Smurf carries you to glory or beats you into the ground, you still have normal LP changes. Clearly not ideal, so what I suggest is that a system looks at the win ratio of players, not including placements (a simple thing to do; ignoring performance is fine, but including rating would probably improve precision), and if someone has a ridiculous win ratio (like >75%), set the LP changes for everyone else in the game with a normal win ratio (in case there are 2+ Smurfs) to minimum. Sure, it'll feel sucky to gain minimal LP for a win, but if you clearly didn't do much to earn it, then why shouldn't your gain reflect that; what it will do is prevent both LP punishment and tilting of the poor sods who just got their arses handed to them by someone who did not belong in that game. There is a reason there isn't Ranked Doombots of Doom....

*More fanciful, less likely to happen ideas:

  1. Remove the hidden MMR system altogether: now, I know this is very unlikely to happen, but many problems with Smurfs come from the semi-decoupling of MMR and Rank. Promos and Demotion Protection can both cause some pretty serious disparities between MMR and Rank, and every issue in those regards holds amplified for Smurfs. For a start, removing Promos stops the more malicious Smurfs from simply throwing a Promo or two to remain in their current Rank. It would also mean that running into a Smurf wouldn't necessarily hinder climbing (ever faced a Smurf in a Promo? You might as well just dodge and save the time).

  2. IP tracking: as a way to detect Smurfs, IP tracking could be potentially useful. However, I'm not overly familiar with data-protection laws across various countries and continents, and any garden-variety VPN could be used to avoid detection.

I know some people want to play with their friends, and some people want to try things on an account other than their main, but Smurfing really does go against everything Ranked is meant to be, it ruins the fun for the rest of us regardless of whether we're with or against the offenders, and for GOd's sake, that's what Normals are there for (or even Flex, since for some reason people refuse to take it seriously, hence why I don't take it at all). And I know Riot is a business, and want to sell as many shiny skins and barely-balanced champions as possible, and want to inflate their subscriber (account) count to do things like attract investors and please shareholders (not like Tencent are gonna drain them dry and leave them with nought but a depreciated IP......), but to do nothing disenfranchises many of the people who buy the shiny skins and barely-balanced champions, and just flags Riot as a company that has stopped truly caring about it's more hardcore players: i.e. the ones most likely to drop money of the product, watch E-Sports, go to conventions.

tl;dr Change how the Ranked system reacts to Smurfs, since they are for some God-forsaken reason here to stay and currently they are anti-fun.

24 Comments

ChaosReyn2/15/2019, 3:38:22 PM2 votes

What defines a smurf to you?

Or to word the question more accurately: How are you going to tell a smurf from some unfortunate guy who finished his placements in low silver but plays closer to a high gold/low plat level?

Things like that happen A LOT you know. And those people are often labeled as smurfs when in reality there are a lot of potential variables that could have led to someone finishing placements far below their actual skill level. Bad matchups, bad teammates, maybe the guy played half his placements while pretty much plastered, or he played some of them with his iron 56 ape of a friend cause he was arrogant and thought iron 56 could be carried...I could go on, but you get the point.

Unless they admit they're smurfs, or you end up noticing that freaking Dyrus's stream shows him in your game, how are you telling apart a smurf from someone who got unlucky in placements or failed to carry their pet monkey out of iron? It's a little difficult to tell, isn't it?

How do you expect anyone else to do that?

GatekeeperTDS2/15/2019, 4:03:35 PM2 votes

It's a gameplay issue, whether you think so or not.

Awf Meta2/15/2019, 4:44:08 PM2 votes

Multiple Riot teams would need to work together on this issue.

Smurfs can't be stopped from making new accounts.

I think the best solution would come from adjusting the MMR algorithm.

JustDazzz1/23/2020, 10:45:35 PM2 votes

They honestly just need to make a main account system where you have to put in a phone number or something of such, heaps of games have done this cs go have prime account and prime match making which make sure your only matched with people who have also made there account there main account, they could do the same thing for league im pretty sure thats how clash currently works with verifying your account with your moblie number why couldn't they do this for ranked

Just a Thought considering they still haven't fix the issue of smurfs and its now 24/01/2020

DeathToEcchi2/15/2019, 6:10:27 PM1 votes

I got hard carried by support WW after he chilled under tower for 15 min letting the other team 2v1 the adc. Probably not a Smurf at all...

haaaaaaalp2/16/2019, 5:08:53 PM1 votes

I feel that the current system of decoupling mmr and rank has better for combatting smurfs than if we were to remove it. With the current system, riot can ramp up mmr gains for smurfs without actually giving them credit for the rank. After a few games, they will be playing against players at their own skill level while their account still shows iron. This allows the system to limit the damage caused by smurfs (by putting them into high ranked games faster) while removing the rewards for the smurfing player (by still having their account show iron or bronze).

The main problem is that no ranking system in the world can put smurfs into the rank where they aren't ruining games without a large sample size.

IainG102/17/2019, 6:44:21 PM1 votes

I'd just like to jump in at this point and thank the contributors for keeping things civil, and giving well thought out responses. For any progress to be made there will need to be criticisms, but that's all good as long as they're kept constructive: "that isn't gonna work" is fairly useless; "that isn't gonna work, and here's why" is useful, and may turn up some points that an OP may agree with, but just didn't happen to think of at the time.

Séance2/18/2019, 7:05:07 AM1 votes

If being a smurf was actually reportable I would get reported just for having this name in every game that i dominate in.

Łøkı2/18/2019, 7:23:45 AM1 votes

Maybe this is a horrible idea; if so please correct me so I learn: what about continually using average number of kills from the last, say, 10 games for smurf detection?

**More detail: **What makes smurfs so miserable to play against (or with!) is how helpless you feel on either team. Even on the winning team, you finish 0/0/2 while the Smurf is 23/0/0 as the Nexus falls at 7 minutes. Over a 10-game average, even if they drop a game or two to keep from ranking up, their kill count is probably pretty insane. Basing it on a larger average like that also prevents accidentally involving a non Smurf who just had a few really good games in a row.

Then what? After a certain kill count threshold is passed, the account begins earning significantly more LP.

There are ways this could be abused by people who want to boost accounts, so someone would need to take this idea and refine it. Perhaps average gametime could also be a factor, so it's not triggered by players who consistently take the game late, naturally earning a large number of kills per game. The LP boost also avoids punishing legitimate accounts, since earning more LP/ranking up faster is a reward for non Smurf players.

In theory, this would help put Smurfs in their appropriate rank, since the only way to avoid triggering it is to not kill as many people.... and that's pretty much why Smurfs Smurf. This is also why it's based on kill count and not KDA -- otherwise Smurfs would just watch their KDA and horrifically feed every time they got close.

Thoughts? (I've just started playing again after a 3 year hiatus, so please don't yell Nooooooob! too harshly if this is a really dumb suggestion. Haha.) ♡

Cobaltfist2/18/2019, 9:13:35 AM1 votes

By all means feel free to make me climb faster with an 80% win rate :D I placed bronze 1 this season even though i went 7/1 and typically play on a gold - low plat level. I already climbed a lot but its really disheartening to start off in a league i havent seen since season 2/3

CrackityJoe3/1/2019, 7:30:51 PM1 votes

Positional ranking further exacerbates the problem. Smurfs in their first season are not being ranked correctly in solo queue. As a Gold 2 player, I played against https://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=hoodcatz when he was a Diamond 4 ADC (on this new smurf account) with a 58% win rate after 270 games, and since he was Plat 3 two weeks prior, it seems like they will be ranked even higher.

Even after 24 jungle games, his positional jungle ranking was only at Silver 1. Somehow he only had a 50% win rate, but a diamond 4 ADC who is still climbing should not be in Silver 1 after 24 games. Every other position that this player is playing against is going to be playing against a Diamond smurf while they are in gold, or even silver during this player's first few games at each positional ranking. This sucks and it is happening a fair amount of the time. It makes many games feel impossible to win or even lose if you have one on your team.

Zelulose5/1/2019, 7:11:25 PM1 votes

I'm ready support the first PvP game that comes out with a skill based ranked system istead of a grind and ending account sharing and smurfing. The minute it comes out. I will stop playing LoL.

This is also the reason why I don't buy their stuff. I can get a full account for $10 at average rank up so why would I ever want to buy champions and skins from them when I can get cheaper from account sharing? (I don't do it but this is player logic) But still I only support games financially that I like.

I say until they fix it ,report them under cheating and comment account sharing. This is not supported by them in ranked and you will be fine doing so.

La Belle Sauvage2/15/2019, 5:49:35 PM1 votes

I think they absolutely could prevent multiple accounts, which wouldn't solve the Smurf issue but it could help reduce the high Elo players who throw games to keep looking neutral.

What about Ip tracking?

I get that you can stomp your IP, but if I were a Smurf who lives in Michigan and I was hired to boost an account of a player in Washington, they should be able to account for that.

I get that IPs are dynamic, but when the profile is historically logging in on the West Coast and suddenly they log in from the north east that could be a potential indicator along with wild swing in performances among other things.

I don't get the feeling Riot cares so much about smurfing.