#What Anti-Smurf measures will be established?

224 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

wise slate
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#🧩│questions Devs and mods are more active in this chat. You're more likely to get a response there

fathom pagoda
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Since Smurfing is unfair and kills Matchmaking - what measures will be there to keep Smurf Accounts at bay? Especially ranked suffers a lot from Smurfing. I would rly like to get into the game, but I will not waste more time on another Smurf-Fest PVP Game.

hidden blade
hidden blade
fathom pagoda
hidden blade
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Smurfing is extremely unhealthy for a game, both for the smurf and others playing with/against a smurf.

fathom pagoda
rain timber
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I think the most reasonable but imperfect measure is to collect reports that how much it “hurted” players emotions for punishing smurfing.

However even in most ideal cases it can end up just banning people who are just win streaking.

League is thought to be handling this by intentionally match making to give “potential smurfers” bad teammates, which is another reasonable thing but this has high resists in asian region

rain timber
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Some important points

  1. It might be fine if noones emotion got hurt during “smurfing” sessions. As smurfing itself is quite vague. Is second account or just having a good condition is smurfing?
  2. Most reasonable measure is to gather reports. However if people figures this out it can be exploited

Also for your idea of League having zero measure

  1. Riot is extremely big and a lot of things are ongoing and hidden from the users. For example, you don’t know how much efforts are taken into taking down bots, cheats, and toxicity, and potentially match making. Everything seem to be working fine? Then it means they are putting quite big amount of efforts to ensure everything working fine. For example you don’t see a match full of a bot usually in League
  2. I bet League is taking multiple forms of anti smurfing it is just invisible to users
dense silo
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Thing is in highly competitive games like league 99.9% of high elo players will make smurfs eventually, not to "be a dick and shit on bad players", but to be able to relax (i know it sounds cringe but playing at 100% focus can be exhausting) or try different champs/strategies, since you usually reached ur rank with only one role/specific champs/specific strategy. I am not condoning going on a iron account 100 0 every game, but wanting a second account is a very normal/understandable thing. The most important part imo is to be able to place smurfs fast, allowing them to get competetive games quickly and saving lower elo players. (riot does good a job on this for example imo)

hidden blade
# fathom pagoda You mean because the Smurf lost a healthy progression in the game?

I can only speak on my behalf, for example, I spent a significant amount of time smurfing in HoN, at one point over the period of time, the smurfing habit has already managed to successfully detach me from actual high ranked games pace. Smurfing not only ruins the experience for other players, it also affects the smurf due to playing on lower difficulty which only negatively affects your game sense over time if overdone. The more difficult a game is, the better for you in the long term, therefore this habit accomplished nothing but a ruined experience for others in exchange of generating some pretty fun content with 950+ GPM, 20+ KD average, 90%+ solo queue winrate, etc, which is obviously only possible when smurfing and extremely difficult to pull off consistently in actual highest ranked games.

rain timber
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Yes I think it is called localization in my culture

fathom pagoda
fathom pagoda
wise slate
fathom pagoda
wise slate
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Yeah sounds about right. I only really watch 2 League YouTubers and they're consistently doing challenger lobbies so I haven't really noticed

fathom pagoda
fathom pagoda
hidden blade
fathom pagoda
hidden blade
wise slate
hidden blade
wise slate
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tyty I appreciate the effort to find them for me

hidden blade
wise slate
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THAT'S THE ONE LOL

fathom pagoda
# hidden blade No doubt about it.

That's what I meant with the distorted reality. It warps player expectation of the game.

If you show League players how the Jungler just wins every lane while doing Objectives with one hand in the meantime, what will they expect from their teammates?

wise slate
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Anywhos while I'm here I'll give a short take on smurfing in general.

Smurfing degrades the game experience for the average player regardless of whether or not they know it's happening in their games. Smurfing is also very very hard to catch and punish outside of obvious outliers like League accounts with 80+% winrates.

Frankly I don't know what solution you could even realistically implement to counter this. In my mind the best thng you can do is give players incentives to play at their actual ranks. It could be banners/skins like League does, or it could be a small amount of premium currency for the high ranks at the end of any given season. But something tangible, that's the most important part.

The rank people are playing at needs to grant them a better service (for lack of better words) than the rank they want to smurf at. I have no idea how to do this. But I do believe it would be significantly easier and more effective to implement preventative measures like these, than it would be to catch them after the fact.

mystic summit
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On the other side of things, what if someone has been poppin' off and they're, well it doesn't even have to be "High MMR" Just, they've climbed to a level that is not suitable to a new person.
How does that already established player recruit brand new friends and play with them right away without disrupting the lobby one way or another and also without getting giga-stomped by getting chucked into the level where the new players do not belong even with on-hand guidance? How does a competent Duos team pick up two friends and then go play Squads with their brand new friends?

wise slate
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Is this thought experiment exclusively considering a ranked mode, or is this for unranked mode as well?

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wait I forgot Supervive has them both in the same lobbies my b

mystic summit
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Yeah I was about to say, haha.

hidden blade
mystic summit
sweet pebble
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Ngl I don’t think smurfing is that big of a deal

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A grand majority of those who Smurf don’t just do it to beat on lower skill players

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That is mad boring

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For league being such a Smurf filled game I think in all the time I played it only ruined game experience in clash

wise slate
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It definitely ruined my experience in Summoner's Rift unranked. Having two or three dudes levelling up their new smurf accounts and completely stomping the game was a horrible experience

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the kind that turns new players off from the game entirely

sweet pebble
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Be stomped or do the stomping

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One game turned you off to the game?

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From my memory smurfing is in like, 1-2 / 10 lobbies no?

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Where it’s obvious enough to tell

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Level 30 acc going 40/0

wise slate
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No you're misunderstanding. I played League for a couple years. I'm saying experiences like those are what can turn new players away ina single game

sweet pebble
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To be real, if a person can’t handle being beaten by someone who is better than them I’m not sure what devs can do

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Especially in context of br

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How the hell you gonna tell someone is smurfing unless you are too in supervive

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It’s not like league where you’re getting dove on repeat behind your tower and then they fight 1v3 whoever comes

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You just lose fight

wise slate
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It's not "getting beaten by someone better than you" that's the issue. It's when you load into your first game and feel like a baby got hit with a nuke. If the skill discrepency is high enough, it'll make for an instant wipe of your squad without understanding what just happened.

obsidian blaze
wise slate
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Oh I'm not expecting much for the first few days lol. They've gotta build a base data set before they can start talking about taking action. I'm just saying over the lifespan of the game it's going to become more and more important to do something about the potential smurfing issue

naive plinth
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Thankfully Supervive has had no party restrictions in the past which is my number one motivator for smurfing. I think that will do a lot to prevent people from smurfing!

wise slate
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^^^ I didn't even think of that but fantastic point. I had to smurf just to play CS with my friends

marsh bluff
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I haven't read too much of the discussion, but I think MMR usually solves this very quickly no? Rapidly getting strong players into the lobbies they should be in. But I guess rank usually updates slower than MMR does, and match making, and rank progression looks really weird if you ignore rank in your match making process. Like a silver account being matched against diamond players because maybe they are a diamond level player playing on a silver account.

Like in Apex, when I start playing ranked after a while of not playing it, I'm starting in bronze and the games are far easier than my normal games because they match making takes into account my inaccurate rank and it takes me a while to progress to like plat or diamond or whatever my rank should be, meanwhile my normal games tend to adapt far faster which are going off pure sbmm which updates faster.

In some of the ranked tests, there was a "bonus" modifier on your rank points gain that was based on individual performance and mmr, to more quickly advance you through the ranks to get you to the appropriate rank, but maybe there's a more transparent or faster way to do that? So people don't see a diamond level player with diamond level mmr as a silver ranked player.

But if you are placed quickly to the corresponding rank, it also removes a lot of the progression you would feel by grinding to it, which is one of the main draws for ranked modes in the first place.

So it seems like there are some competing interests for how these systems should work, which makes it a difficult problem to solve.

wise slate
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and not even egrigeously, like 1-2 ranks out of range

tender pivot
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smurfing is a multi-faceted issue and needs multiple ways of being dealt with and it needs to be aggressively monitored and punished (not just banning the smurf account but all the accounts they own, including their main), many games have different ways of combating it. inspiration can be gained from them

but solely relying on mmr and having very tight mmr protocols in place to put smurfs into their own queue, will not fix the smurfing problem - but only keep smurfs to continue to smurf, cause they will hit a plateau and make a new one to do it over and over again

frozen whale
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The answer is clearly to Smurf to kill smurfs and improve the other players experiences /j

wise slate
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time to buy high elo accounts as a bronzie :DDDD

drifting swallow
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afaik early couple games have crazy mmr multipliers so if someone is smurfing they will not remain in lower brackets for long, plus ranked is not machmade on rank but on mmr instead

fathom pagoda
fathom pagoda
fathom pagoda
marsh bluff
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I don't often play ranked in most games, but I haven't personally noticed smurfing being a relevant issue in unranked modes which just use sbmm in any game I've played. Is it something that is more common in ranked vs unranked modes?

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Also plausible that I don't see it because I'm usually in the higher percentile of players, so there's less players above me that would be able to smurf on me to begin with. Not sure how the probability with the variable player populations actually would work out there though.

hidden blade
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But I wouldn't be surprised if there are individuals who are into that, lol.

fathom pagoda
marsh bluff
hidden blade
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Difficulty and skill wise.

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So I would personally, refer to those individuals as mentally unwell, maybe it's just me, but that's my logic.

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Content is only plausible excuse for the forementioned sin.

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Another reason is stats, what do you flex in unranked? Unless unranked games count towards your winrate.

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Even then, it's just super lame.

fathom pagoda
marsh bluff
marsh bluff
naive plinth
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I mean I at one point had like fifteen league smurfs

hidden blade
fathom pagoda
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So there is still no official statement this far.

tender pivot
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Why would there, not every thread and feedback demands an official statement

fathom pagoda
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Because it is a central point of their matchmaking

frozen whale
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It's not exactly the same, but sometimes I use alt accounts to practice certain things I'm bad at without "penalty" (impacting my mains rank/winrate etc) if I ever do it in Supervive (which I doubt) there is the inevitable point where I have to play the early games

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Against people that might not be so good

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Which you could call smurfing, however temporary or for whatever reasoning

marsh bluff
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Considering Ranked & Unranked queues will potentially be merged for the time being, is there a reason to not use unranked for that? My understanding is that you wouldn't watn to do that in other games because presumably the match quality would be worse in the unranked games, but maybe that wouldn't be the case with this setup?

frozen whale
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yeah that's one reason I doubt I'll have need for an alt in this game

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but it is something that contributes to "smurfing"

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yk idk if I really had a point with it

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maybe I was the yapper all along

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you can ignore me

sudden obsidian
# marsh bluff Considering Ranked & Unranked queues will potentially be merged for the time bei...
  • Playing with new friends and not wanting to drag them on very hard lobbies
  • Not enjoying your current MMR because very different reasons, you can think your MMR is boring/ELO hell/other (my name)
  • Good old wanting to feel superior at others and pubstomp lobbies for some time
  • Thinking you are hardstuck due to matchmaking
  • Wanting to practice different hunters with ppl playing ranked on your squad (queue is merged but you cant be unranked with ranked ppl on your squad at the same time)
  • Having a throw-away account where you can play ranked in a relaxed way without caring about winning or losing but still participating in the points system (this is what flexq on league of legends is used for)
sudden obsidian
sweet pebble
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A lot of those seem like personal problems idk

sudden obsidian
sweet pebble
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Fair

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I think smurfing is pretty much out of devs hands in all games. Most you can do seems to be put them where they belong as fast as possible with matchmaking.

sudden obsidian
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Ah yes, smurfing is totally impossible to wipe

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As a dev you have to fix the matchmaking problems you can that cause smurfs and make sure smurfs are pumped out to their real elo, but you can still de-rank accounts on purpose and things like that

sweet pebble
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In what way does matchmaking cause smurfs?

sudden obsidian
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Smurfing in league of legends got popular because at high levels the matchmaking was created to match you on a game with a skill level like yours, chall queues were like 20-30 minutes so players just played on smurfs

sweet pebble
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Looking at the numbers that does not seem to terrible. Masters queues are tolerable

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There are quite literally only 200 challenger players

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So odds you end up against a challenger Smurf is slim due to that reasoning

sudden obsidian
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Ah yeah but top % of your community are more likely to be streamers and be watched so community will just copy you and thats how all happened

tender pivot
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smurfing isn't an mmr system flaw/queue time only issue, it's a multi faceted issue.

some people smurf just to shit on players lower elo than them, they get hard off that and the reason smurfs are a problem in league, is not beacuse some 200 players have bad queue times, lol

there's a huge population of smurfs, i've coached a lot of ppl in league when i was active still and some reasons why ppl smurf are absurd

the main reasons why ppl smurf (general population, not just 0.01% players) are:

  • main acc is banned
  • hit a plataeu in your elo range and think you deserve higher rank so you try again on a smurf, because "your team is holding you back" (but still hit plataeu again)
  • selling accounts (worst issue of them all)
  • boosting
  • playing with e-girls to look cool
  • so you can be toxic without facing consequences on your main

all of those ahve nothing to do with MMR + queue times but with fundamentally toxic behaviour - smurfing needs to be completely shut down, illegal and hunted like the plague - it destroys mmr ecosystems and makes people quit games too

smurfing is for losers, those who have high queue times can go play scrims instead or find other ways to play at their highest peak, it's a lame excuse

sudden obsidian
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For me is the logical way of using a smurf, I normally had two accounts on league, main acc and smurf acc to practice champions on a ranked enviroment (normally main was master, smurf mid diamond), even if queues are mixed on supervive I would still go secondary account path instead of just unchecking ranked for many different reasons

tender pivot
sweet pebble
tender pivot
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ppl care too much about rank, than actually learning and practicing

tender pivot
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not playing with ur friends to have fun

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u can 5 stack in valorant, regardless of rank disparity

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that's a good system

sudden obsidian
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Ladder is fucked up due to that

tender pivot
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the thing is, you can't ever please both solo q and team queuers at the same time

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you either have to split them up, or find a compromise

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its NEVER possible to have it balanced

sweet pebble
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What makes more money

sudden obsidian
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5 stack on valorant only made boosting legal

sweet pebble
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I think people buying things on smurfs makes more money

tender pivot
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thats a side effect of it yes

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and the reason why smurf accounts arent being targeted or outlawed in league

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is beacuse they generate a lot of money for riot

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:)

naive plinth
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I think I have personally ruined around 300-400 games of league for lower ranked players just from my smurfs alone

sudden obsidian
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There was a time where botted accounts were target banned during 2017-2019

naive plinth
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Maybe higher

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Probably higher

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I always underestimate how much I play on a Smurf

sudden obsidian
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There are a lot of valid reasons to smurf on league, specially if you are on the higher end, not the case for supervive though

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But if I did not want to appear on lolpros.gg search I had to hop on a smurf there was no other way

naive plinth
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There was one account I got ap gnar to D1 that was so funny lmao

tender pivot
naive plinth
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As soon as I got duo restricted I'd swap accounts to keep playing with my friend. Then when they instituted MMR queue restriction I just stopped playing

tender pivot
sudden obsidian
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Nah there is never a valid reason to put someone on an undeserved rank

tender pivot
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it makes u money?

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hows that not a valid reason?

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also, you buying smurf accounts - actively supports botters

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is that a good thing?

naive plinth
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I got an account duo restricted at plat 3. That was wild

tender pivot
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just so u can dick on low elo players for ur own ego?

sweet pebble
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Nobody botting on Supervive

tender pivot
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or for your own "training sessions" ?

tender pivot
naive plinth
tender pivot
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ruining your games in the future

sweet pebble
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That’s a different issue

tender pivot
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ppl bot and cheat in valorant too

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no game is safe

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lmao

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if theres money to be gained, ppl will do it

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like if u want to practice a champ, what stops you from doing it in unranked or sucking it up and losing some mmr for it?

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no need to have a smurf to train

sudden obsidian
tender pivot
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the only valid reasons i can ever see, is to play ranked with your friend, partner or whatever

tender pivot
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practicing in gold elo, vs practicing in coinflip unranked games

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is legit the same shit

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u play vs ppl inferior to your rank

sudden obsidian
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my smurfs were always 1-2 divs at much from my main acc though

tender pivot
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either way, smurfs are toxic

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i can see ppl wanting to play with friends

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but that should be supported via the game

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and not be paywall/3rd party gated behind smurf accounts

sudden obsidian
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And actually you could level up your accounts, I levelled up most of my smurf accs by hand, banning botting accounts is not a solution, you just level by hand

tender pivot
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training arguments are bs and always were, theres many ways to practice without supporting botters selling smurf accounts, destroying the game quality of lower than ur mmr ppl while u grind that smurf up

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yeah but not everyone does that "lvling by hand" thing

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im sure as hell all those streamers didnt :)

sudden obsidian
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It depends on which one, most of the streamers did level their accs

tender pivot
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buddy, i've been in that ecosystem for a long time

sudden obsidian
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If you are a big big streamer you pay someone to level it up for you

tender pivot
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95% of them didnt hand level

sudden obsidian
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if you are a random L9 wannabe you bought them yes

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spanish semi-pro scene paid ppl to level accounts from korean imports, streamers atleast on spain used same thing

tender pivot
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but anyways this isnt a discussion thread, i've shared my feedback

sudden obsidian
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My addition to the feedback is that as long as soloq is not a thing, its another reason to smurf

tender pivot
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smurfs are toxic - games should support playing with your friends via game systems, not support it through 3rd party/pay wall sources such as buying smurf accs

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but in the end is tc's call, botters and cheaters will be a thing and go rampart too

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it's a fact, that plagues all multiplayer games. question is how strict and how commited TC is to combat those things

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good luck playing vs aim botting shrikes, myths, ghosts and co

sudden obsidian
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In the end I will probably just play normally, if I end up seeing 24/7 same full stack squads will hop on a secondary acc and chill

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It is not ethical but it is what it is soloq vs stacks sucks, so its just another reason to not wanting to play on your main account

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Smurfs are inevitable, there will always be reasons to do one, ethical or not, toxic or not

tender pivot
sudden obsidian
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I do enjoy the game, given proper conditions to be enjoyed. Game is hella fun until you do a reality check with yourself, then you can go to a new account and see that its fun again

fathom pagoda
tender pivot
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:)

fathom pagoda
naive plinth
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🙀

tender pivot
fathom pagoda
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So there is no official statement towards Smurfing. Great outlook.

weary kiln
wise slate
# fathom pagoda So there is no official statement towards Smurfing. Great outlook.

Give them some time. It's not as simple as making a statement. There's (presumably) a lot of internal stuff that has to go on regarding making plans around issues in the game before they can be communicated with the playerbase. With how open the devs have been during the various betas of this game I don't think we have any reason to believe they won't make a comment on smurfing and their plans around it as we go further into the open beta.

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Especially with a topic as multi-faceted as smurfing, they likely need a LOT of data to even start considering actions to be taken. No one will be smurfing a couple days into beta. As the numbers begin to rise, that's when I would expect to start hearing about it.

sudden obsidian
fathom pagoda
fathom pagoda
wise slate
sudden obsidian
fathom pagoda
wise slate
fathom pagoda
wise slate
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yes. Today we talked about matchmaking issues and why we don't want an ff button in the game

unborn gale
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I mean there is an answer to this, just ban them and boom smurfing dies overnight.

wise slate
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Unfortunately for a free to play game that does barely anything

brazen pecan
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Only way to accurately do this is by IP banning but also easy to get around with medium grade technical experience or a few YouTube videos.

wise slate
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The way to treat the smurfing problem lies not entirely in the punishment, but also in treating the core causes. There will always be a subset who just want to dunk on bronze players, but there are other treatable causes.

brazen pecan
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I think smurfing is the least of our problems. Going forth, the issue is going to be cheaters.

brazen pecan
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Small issue though is, introduce an anti cheat like vanguard and you lose everyone that has a background in hardware/software that has a brain.

Introduce Easy anti cheat and anyone that has updated windows 11 to build 24h2 will hit BSOD errors or find out quickly that their ram is unstable (until Microsoft irons out the issues and lifts the safe holds on PC's with EAC)

wise slate
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Yeah Vanguard or another always on ac would make me uninstall. It made me uninstall League earlier this year.

sudden obsidian
brazen pecan
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There is a safehold on current 23h2 PCs that will not offer you the 24h2 update if you have specific drivers/devices/peripherals/software. Easy anti cheat is one of those. Vanguard is another. At least EAC has traceable kernel connect/disconnect