Riot says it hasn’t changed League’s ranked system to combat smurfing

Riot Games Support tweeted out that the League of Legends ranked climb was adjusted to “take a lot longer” because “smurfing ruins the game.” But it turns out that was wrong.

League lead producer of gameplay Jeremy “Brightmoon” Lee clarified the matchmaking controversy today, quelling the fire on a couple of Reddit posts. While frustrated fans were led to believe the ranked climb had slowed down to deter smurfing, Brightmoon explained that isn’t the case. Lead gameplay designer Mark “Scruffy” Yetter echoed those sentiments in a tweet.

“Sorry to jump into this thread 8 hours late, but I wanted to clarify: we did not change the climb and we are not using the climb to combat smurfing,” Brightmoon commented on a Reddit post. “The tweet from player support was incorrect on all of these points and they will be putting out a clarification on that. Sorry for the confusion.”

The Riot dev admitted that there are better ways to improve the experience for players matching against smurfs, but making the climb harder wouldn’t be one of them.

Though this information will bring relief to the annoyed fan base, some players still wonder why LP gains seem minimal while losses prove devastating. When the Riot Support Twitter explained that the climb was slowed down to combat smurfing, for example, it was in response to a player who went 36-0 and was Platinum four with Diamond two MMR.

Players have also reported being placed in games with others who are a considerably higher rank than them, further highlighting the MMR issues. Schalke 04’s Konstantinos-Napoleon “FORG1VEN” Tzortziou tweeted a picture earlier today that showed a very one-sided lobby.

One team had mostly high Platinum players who only played around 10 to 40 games. The other team had one Grandmaster and one Challenger player mixed in with their Platinum teammates.

Though Brightmoon’s comments are certainly comforting, some questions still remain unanswered.

Update Feb. 20 1:30pm CT: Riot responded to FORG1VEN’s tweet, claiming there was an issue with the matchmaking system last night causing players to be matched “WAY below” their actual skill. It should be resolved within a “couple hours.”