LoL players demand “zero tolerance” for smurfs

League of Legends players are calling on Riot Games to take a more proactive approach to eliminating smurf accounts, due to their impact on the ranked experience.

Smurfing has always been a controversial aspect in any multiplayer game, especially competitive ones. The idea of using a second account without affecting the first has been around for a long time, but its impact on games like League of Legends has caused quite a bit of discontent. The fact that content creators frequently use it doesn’t help matters either.

But now players are calling on Riot to take more action against smurfing, with some saying the practice completely ruins the ranked experience.

League of Legends players call on Riot to end smurfing

One player expressed frustration with the ranking system on Reddit, saying: “The scale of smurfing creates a similar experience to engagement-based matchmaking and perhaps that’s why so many people believe in the existence of a ‘loser queue’.

Let’s say you have a string of wins and you move up a few divisions, this will cause your MMR to increase quickly, because it’s trying to predict your true level, and that’s normal, that’s what’s supposed to happen, but the next day, you come up against a smurf who probably also has a string of victories, because he is playing against players well below his level.”

Smurfs are ruining ranked byu/Just_Addition_5650 inleagueoflegends

“When the game then tries to create two balanced teams, it will place the players with the highest MMR on opposing teams, which will most likely be the winning streak players, because they have an inflated MMR, and in this scenario, it would be YOU and the Smurf, and this will happen for several games until your MMR returns to its displayed rank or below, creating the win/loss streak experience that we all know and hate.”

Several other players were quick to agree with this player’s opinion, with one pointing out how Riot’s deterrents don’t apply to smurfs: “None of the usual deterrents work on them, because the account itself is meaningless to them, it’s all about seeing KDA and LPs increase.”