The League of Legends community is in an uproar thanks to a gameplay clip that shows just how bad smurfing is in the game.
In the clip, a summoner playing Rengar camped the bottom lane for a couple of minutes and kept killing a player on Vayne from different angles. First, they began with the bush in the jungle. Then, they moved to the lane and kept using Rengar’s bush mechanics to the max, making Vayne’s life pure hell.
After being killed four times by the bullying Rengar, the Vayne player gave up and quit the game.
This situation created a heated discussion with players advocating against using smurfs to stomp low Elo and then bragging about it. Earlier this year, Riot said it doesn’t “want players creating alt accounts just to blow through the climb.” “We encourage players to stay on their mains,” Riot said in February. “Smurfing ruins the game experience for others.”
While the intention behind Riot’s goal is clear, the end result is different from expectations. Instead of having smurfs blow through low Elo and get to a higher Elo faster, they get to spend more time at a lower Elo and discourage low Elo players from participating in the ranked queue.
Some players say this is good practice, while others feel that this ruins the desire to climb when you spend so much effort winning a 60-minute game only to lose the next one in under 20 minutes.
The situation is here to stay unless Riot intervenes with harsher decisions to combat smurfing. But until then, we’ll keep seeing similar clips pop up.
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