Smurf Accounts and How They Impact LoL

[quote=Bioalchemist]Hey Everyone, As I have been playing LoL close to a year now, there is one thing that has nagged at me a bit. I watch professional players streams and high elo streams who smurf. I read on Mobafire that many of our high elo community has smurf accounts. With all these highly skilled LoL players starting from 'scratch' and playing against low elo players, how does it impact LoL gameplay/as a game? Is the impact a [color=#808000]negative one or positive[/color]? Is the impact balanced by the fact that you will randomly encounter a smurf on your side of the field one game and have a smurf on the other side of the field the next? Personally I believe the impact is a [color=#ff8000]negative[/color] one. Everyone who is at high elo and smurfs talks about how they can go to bronze carry teams up to XX elo by themselves. Doesn't that take away from all the other players in the game? isn't that toxic as well or at least doesn't that lead to toxicity or just simply disgust with the fact that you went up against a Diamond I player in lane and got stomped because you aren't at a diamond I skill level? What happens when a Diamond I player makes a smurf and duo's with a person to carry them to high elo? The person didn't actually gain the skills needed to play at a higher elo so when they get there and play without the smurf carry they suck...than the team who actually deserves to be at that elo suffers. Naturally my opinion is biased as I myself have not created a smurf account and have no interest in doing so. I am interested to hear what the people who smurf think as well as the people like myself who don't. [color=#00ffff]Lets try to keep it civil eh?[/color][/quote]

[quote=Bludes]I hate smurf accounts. I mean - it's just not fair. For example: You're a bronze player and you are trying hard to become gold - that's not hard enough at all, why not fight a diamond player in the enemy team to get frustrated and become toxic? Smurfs may help their team a bit but in the end the players have to learn how to play theirselves and they just don't get this experience with a smurf. They get carried..sometimes they don't even get carried. They trust this smurf but sometimes even the diamond player will fail. Sometimes the smurf blames his team for the lose and the community gets toxic again. Toxic, toxic, toxic, toxic, toxic...[/quote]

[quote=Janitsu]I think it's negative because most of the low levels are still actual lowlevels. (from 32 million monthly players to 50 million or something) so it makes them stop playing because they are crushed etc. I basically hate smurfing when my smurf is low level. I either crush people or diamond/challenger smurfs crush me. [color=red]NEGATIVE (as in HIV - positive)[/color][/quote]

[quote=Joxuu]I think smurfing is OK, as long as you don't spam like 5 accounts or so. Smurfing others higher by duo quing.. Nothing wrong if the guy can keep up, but I don't see why someone would want that. What fun do you have if you reach you're goals with someones help in stead of your own. I don't mean that duo quing is bad, It's good, but if you do diamond smurf to get bronze to platinum or something, it's bad. Basically you will have problems along the way by facing platinum players against bronze and it would ruin you're competitive games. Imagine player that is bronze skilled stuck at platinum V and only feeds every game knowing you propably never can climb higher. tldr: Smurfing low ELO = Can't keep up = Ruins ranked games = Normals 24/7, cus ranked ruined[/quote]

[quote=Vynertje]As much as I'd love to play at bronze 5 with an mmr of 500 and see all the people failing, I have to agree with you: if you purposely get your smurf at bronze tiers to get up to diamond, it is unfair. However, if you just want a second account and just want to level it up, it is fine with me.[/quote]

[quote=OTGBionicArm]I don't have a major issue with smurfing unless your sole intention is to stomp new players or low elo players. That's just kind of sadistic and ruins the learning experience for those players. I realize "the only way to learn is to fight better people", but thats a bit overboard. I know I didn't learn anything by being mercilessly beaten by smurfs when I started.[/quote]

[quote=Kazega]Good comes with the bad. People, myself especially, often strive to get better. I believe that the best way to do that is to play against strong opponents. The strong opponents are the ones that know the mistakes of the game, and most importantly, how to move on those mistakes. If I step in the wrong spot and I die for it I deserve that death and it tells me that I made a mistake. If I step in that spot and don't die because my opponent doesn't know better it doesn't improve my skill at all. While playing against a strong opponent is fun, fighting someone who is too strong can be frustrating. Recently I had a provisional match up for one of my ranked teams that matched my team with a diamond 1 player and bronze scrubs. We were destroyed. My team and I raged at the fact that they were cheating the system but in the end I doubt anything will come of it. I didn't lane against the diamond player so I can't say for sure what we t wrong, just that something went horribly wrong. I'm not sure I learned anything from that game. I was seeing too much red as my team tried to shut down a fed Daimlnd 1 Riven that went to the Mid lane. Overall it is neither positive nor negative. All the negatives you find can also be canceled out by positives. While it is an abuse of the system And seen as bad. The people carried by the smurf will not get better, especially if it was just one random Solo Queue game. If it was a team or a duo queue the. The carried will either not touch the team because they have what they wanted and won't bother anyone by sitting on a gold spot, and only play one game a month to keep that spot. Yeah they will get destroyed and be called bad but they so t really care because that's the type of people they are. They should be dealt with but probably won't be. If they are then great. If not, oh well. You can't change it outside of reporting them so stop trying.[/quote]

[quote=C4 Lasty]You have just as much chance of getting a smurf on your team as you do on the enemy team. Most people claiming to be smurfs are actually not. I got a bunch of friend requests recently from bronzies, some kid had been pretending to be me.[/quote]

[quote=IAmByakuya][quote=OTGBionicArm] I don't have a major issue with smurfing unless your sole intention is to stomp new players or low elo players. That's just kind of sadistic and ruins the learning experience for those players. I realize "the only way to learn is to fight better people", but thats a bit overboard. I know I didn't learn anything by being mercilessly beaten by smurfs when I started. [/quote] This[/quote]

[quote=Bioalchemist]good discussion and points so far :)[/quote]