Today, we permanently banned 90,000 smurf accounts that have been active over the last few months. Smurf accounts are alternate accounts used by players to avoid playing at the correct MMR, to abandon games, to cheat, to grief, or to otherwise be toxic without consequence.

Additionally, we have traced every single one of these smurf accounts back to its main account. Going forward, a main account found associated with a smurf account could result in a wide range of punishments, from temporary adjustments to behavior scores to permanent account bans.

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[–] Clbull 32 points 1 year ago (4 children)

League of Legends has a very unique account selling problem that Riot have proven outright fucking incompetent in addressing.

You need to hit level 30 on your account to start playing Ranked, which can take about 112 hours of cumulative play time to achieve. This has created a black market for fresh League accounts that have been pushed to Level 30 and are ready to be played in Ranked.

Unranked League accounts that are level 30 fetch about $1 - $10 on illicit websites because there are whole industries of Chinese gold farming firms and bots infiltrating the game. If you want an account that's in Iron 3 or Iron 4 (the two lowest divisions in Ranked), it can fetch a few hundred dollars at bare minimum, at least if DongHuaP is to be believed. Iron accounts are so expensive because of how hard they are to actually get into Iron in the first place without tripping Riot's automated reporting systems and getting banned, but also they're lucrative for YouTube content creators because they use them to do 'Iron to Grandmaster' series.

I'm somebody who peaked at Archon rank in DOTA 2 (LoL equivalent would be Platinum) and used to play StarCraft II at Master level (second highest league in the game, Grandmaster is top-200 in the region), so I'm not exactly incompetent at RTS or MOBA games. But in League my account is borked and I'm in literal elo hell. I have found it impossible to climb above Iron 2 because of smurfs, bots and powerlevellers inting their accounts deliberately so that they can resell them.

[–] sonovebitch 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

DongHuaP mentioned. Auto upvote.

But yeah ELO hell is real... I tried to combat that by only playing with at least 1 premade (duo). If I bring someone in, that makes one less spot for inter/AFKer/troll in my team, right? Yes. But matchmaking also sends you to harder matches because "you are at advantage of playing with a premade".

Each past season since S07, I reach gold then quit. This season I fell from Gold 4 10LP straight to Silver 4 25LP. 15 loses streak. The hardest I've ever fallen. Soul crushing. And I usually end up top 3 players of the match. I make mistakes, but they don't cost us the loss.

Even in bottom silver, I saw matchmaking sending Platinums in my enemy team (based on porofessor.gg pre-match info). I thought it wasn't possible to play with 2 divisions difference. Get your shits together and fix matchmaking, Riot.

[–] Clbull 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It actually amazes me how much friendlier and more capable of critical thinking people on Lemmy are.

My comment on r/leagueoflegends would have probably been removed by a moderator for breaking some kind of arbitrary hidden rule, or heavily downvoted with people telling me I'm full of shit and elo hell is a myth.

Matchmaking is borked in League and if Riot don't get off their lazy asses and fix it, game's gonna die.

[–] lorkano 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There is this notion going that league of legends ranking system is good which is strange. Full of smurfs ranking up, full of bad players deranking after buying boosted accounts, and few actually players that want to win and are trying really hard, but at the end of the day, if you are not the type of player that can extremely carry, result of your game is decided before you even start playing. And then they removed ability to see teammates nicknames, so I can't dodge obvious trolls anymore, and have to play in the team with people that have for example 30 ranked games played with around 40% winrate.

[–] Clbull 1 points 1 year ago

The ranking system is complete dogshit in League, and people instantly dismiss you when you say elo hell is real, because if it was, all these coaching sites like SkillCapped, GameLeap, ProGuides, etc wouldn't be able to sell you their own brands of snake oil.

Riot's customer support is also dogshit. The amount of in-game reports, Zendesk tickets, and posts on Twitter/X that have been straight-up ignored are through the roof.

[–] sonovebitch 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

True. Just mentioning ELO hell in r/leagueoflegends you get downvoted to hell and spammed "you just need to git gud/you just need to carry your games/you just need to take a break" 🙃

[–] Clbull 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Not to mention... I'm Plat in Wild Rift, which is the dumbed down bastardized mobile version of the game.

Funny thing is Wild Rift recommends different builds. Senna with Grasp of the Undying is considered troll tier in League but is a top build in WR, despite having practically identical movesets..

She literally has the same abilities and the same infinite AD and range scaling on her soul mechanic. This would make Grasp great for her in the main game from how many opportunities she has to buff her health.

[–] Defaced 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I was watching a league stream on twitch because I thought I might try to get back into it a little, but one of the ads in the twitch chat that was sponsoring the streamer was for a league Smurf account seller. I noped the fuck out of league and uninstalled instantly. I might give dota 2 another shot now, smurfs were really killing the experience of learning and playing the game.

[–] pleasemakesense 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

all smurfs arent gone yet sadly. Hopefully as the report system has collected enough reports many of them will get banned

[–] Defaced 2 points 1 year ago

It's just refreshing seeing a company publicly state smurfs aren't tolerated. It's always this unspoken thing that smurfs are just always there because they're not technically against any TOS. Finally a company has the balls to float out say smurfs ruin the game for others.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have found it impossible to climb above Iron 2 because of smurfs, bots and powerlevellers inting their accounts deliberately so that they can resell them.

If this is the case, then how does this happen?

they’re lucrative for YouTube content creators because they use them to do ‘Iron to Grandmaster’ series.

[–] matter 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

2 is higher than 3 or 4.

Presumably OP is about as skilled as, or a little more than, account farmers (who are bound to be pretty good to make any money...) and less skilled than professional YouTubers.

[–] scoops 1 points 1 year ago

Fascinating!