LoL adopts the best change from Dota 2 in recent years and wants to ban annoying players

earthpressnews

League of Legends is planning an update to the ranked system. This is intended to better sort players into the ranks in which they belong. This also means that anyone who smurfs to destroy noobs will soon be in a lot of trouble. Competitor Dota 2 has been doing this for years.

What are Smurfs?

  • “Smurf” is the name given to second accounts of (usually extremely good) players.
  • The goal of smurfs is usually to either correct their own rating or – more often – to play at low ratings in order to annoy newcomers.
  • This is great fun for the Smurfers themselves, but honest players are really annoyed by this sort of thing. LoL now wants to take action against this.

    • This is the change: In the latest developer blog, LoL maker Riot describes how ranks should be better adjusted in the future. Under the point: “The search for the right starting point” it says:

    So if you are a player who wants to create a new account to take down lower ranked players for fun, we want to be able to detect this and ban your account. And if you’re a high-ranking player who wants to level up accounts to sell, we want to recognize that too.

    Specifically, this means: Riot now wants to be able to track down Smurfs and ban them if necessary. To do this, they are experimenting with “newly implemented tools”. There are no backgrounds. The changes should go live with Split 2.

    This is exactly how competitor Dota 2 has already dealt with Smurfs. In 2021 there was a change to the Valve MOBA that means Smurfs will be banned. Corresponding users will first receive a warning on their main account. If you continue, you’ll get the ban hammer.

    League of Legends opens the 2024 season with an emotional trailer

    More videos

    Autoplay

    Smurfs have been a problem in LoL for a long time

    Only shortly before the announcement, hundreds of users on Reddit called for exactly this change. It says: It happens too often that you have to play with Smurfs. That’s just not fun.

    Worse still, as a new player you are also attacked for being new and having no idea about the game. The experience as a newbie is horrible. Even if you watch streamers to learn, they are toxic to people who don’t know mechanics.

    Recently, it was exactly this style of play that caused a bigger story from Brazil. There, a 66-year-old just wanted to play, but was constantly being ripped apart by Smurfs – so much so that he lost interest.

    However, someone gave him a strong account and the “LoL grandpa” became a “reverse smurf”, i.e. he played as a much too bad player with the upper rating. With success, more or less: he was able to ruin the game for all the nasty people just by being bad. This all grew into a real argument: a 66-year-old grandpa becomes a legend in LoL and a nightmare for Riot Games

    mmod-game