Some League of Legends fans have complained about a certain aspect of Ranked games in League of Legends.
Most LoL players know that there are people called smurfs in the community. This term is used for people who are familiar with the game and who create new accounts to play ranked games.
This leads to a situation where their level is much higher than other people who may have just started their adventure with League of Legends. Smurfs sometimes play on new accounts in order to make challenges consisting in quickly getting a high division (e.g. in 2 weeks) or simply boosting the profiles of their colleagues.
There are many examples and it is difficult to describe this phenomenon in one particular way. While there is no strict definition of a smurf, virtually every LoL player knows who that term applies to.
Due to the fact that many people create new accounts and thus are ahead of beginners in terms of skills and knowledge of the game, Riot has created a smurf queue system – it is not directly available as solo/duo or flex. It was created to gather players of a higher level and to relieve beginners a bit, who would probably quickly get discouraged from playing ranked games if they still had gotten much stronger opponents.
Smurf queue – why is it a problem?
One of the players complained on Reddit that his experience with ranked matches was a real ordeal. All because the game system puts him in the smurf queue. The author of the post wrote:
I’m sure you’ve heard it before, but man it just sucks so much trying to get back into this game. This is the third time in the past 2 years where I’ve tried to get back into solo/duo and just have the experience ruined by Smurf queue. 5-6 players per game on fresh accounts. And this rage post isn’t even influenced from a loss, I’m actually 4-1 in my placements rn and have been doing fine. It’s just not fun gameplay at all.
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As an adult with an actual life, I don’t want to play 150+ games to get out of Smurf queue so the system can recognize that I’m not a Smurf. It should take a computer less than a millisecond to recognize that my account level and age is not that of a Smurf. My friends are also very hesitant to even touch solo queue again because of this.
The author of the post strongly complained that some players are thrown into the queue even though they are not smurfs. In his opinion, such mistakes should not take place. The user admitted that what happened to him effectively destroys the enjoyment of the game and thus feels helpless.
What do the other players say? One commenter admitted that the system is not bad on its own, but needs a few tweaks.
It doesn’t take 150 games to get out, but otherwise agreed. Late placements putting players in smurf games shows there’s work that needs to be done.
Yes I know everyone else has settled in their MMR/ rankings, yes I know placements lets my rank lag behind my MMR. There’s nothing I can do about it as a returning player though, so into the absolute shitstain quality smurf games I go.
Smurf queue is fine, Riot just needs to fix its stupid interactions with placements (and hopefully also decay).