The developers reveal that they are considering new solutions to help combat smurfs.
Smurfing in League of Legends has really been a big problem for many years. No one really likes to run into smurfs, who ruin gameplay and make the match heavily one-sided. Players think it’s unfair and takes away the fun of climbing the ranking ladder.
It can’t be forgotten that achievements on rankeds are really important for many people, so they would like Riot to deal with trolls, AFKs, and the aforementioned smurfs as soon as possible.
Fighting smurfs in League of Legends
The topic of smurfing has resurfaced on LoL’s Reddit and a staff member has also spoken out about it. Riot Siraris agreed with the community that smurfs are a serious problem in ranking queues.
Personally, I think this is a problem. It’s not a cool feeling when you’re making progress and winning matches, and then you feel like you have to do herculean work to climb further.
Smurfs are something that has been around practically since the beginning of League of Legends. Nowadays, many of them are quite toxic towards lower-ranked players, which was the main complaint in the post on Reddit that started the whole discussion.
In a comment, the Rioter admitted that the developers are really trying to make the problem smaller and smaller, and players happier.
We are doing a lot around how we evaluate player skills and how we adjust MMR, so maybe some of this work will bear fruit in solving this problem.
In another comment, he added:
I would say the best way for us to action against smurfs is to get people to their actual MMR as fast as humanly possible. And we are working on this. If you make a smurf, and you should be in plat, lets get you to plat in 2 or 3 games.
People being toxic is a separate issue, and people buying secondary accounts to get around bans is a separate issue that we are also working on. I don’t think people buying smurf accounts inherently makes them toxic. People have different reasons for playing on smurfs, it’s the nefarious accounts that we need to be most concerned with.
Rioter stressed that the developers are looking at the issue and working on improving the ranking system. Of course, he did not reveal all the details. However, it is rumored that the first effects will be felt later this year, but this does not mean that the changes will appear in the coming weeks.
It’s a very complex problem and we don’t want to release something half-hearted that will bring even more chaos to the system.