Riot is trying to improve the ranked experience for League of Legends players. In a recent Reddit AMA they've discussed some of their plans to improve ranked and what has already been implemented.
Smurfs and toxicity are nothing new in League of Legends. For years now, Riot has been coming up with new measures to try and improve the solo queue environment for everyone. In a recent Reddit AMA, the issue with smurf accounts and toxicity came up once again.
August “Iksar” Ayala responded to the question regarding improvements for ranked, expanding and giving more information on what Riot has been working on throughout the last few months leading into the 2024 League of Legends Season.
LoL: Riot Hopeful That Matchmaking Improvements Will Lead To Improved Ranked Games
Riot Iskar doubled down on the recent changes to the matchmaking system Riot have implemented. These improvements are supposed to give players better initial placements when they first get into ranked, so they'll be able to play alongside and against players of their own caliber.
First priority is getting actual new players into games with similarly skilled opponents. [...] We are fixing this along with many other edge case situations where low-skill players are thrown into high skill matches unintentionally.
He stated that low elo players getting matched with those in much higher skill tiers than their own shouldn't happen as much going forward, explaining that the team's first priority was to get new players into games with other new players instead of accidentally placing much higher.
Smurf Account Detection To Stop Inting
Team has been doing an AMA on reddit today and we got a question asking for our progress on ranked, matchmaking and smurfing. Here is an update --We've had a heavy focus on matchmaking, ranked, smurfs, & bots in the last couple weeks -- many changes on the way or being worked...
— August Dean Ayala (@RiotIksar) January 16, 2024
Another key issue that plagues League through the last few seasons was smurf accounts. While Riot doesn't seem to see a problem with smurf accounts, they do have an issue with players running it down to lose games on purpose. This is often being done by players on secondary accounts to lower ones MMR and then play in a lower skill bracket.
A smurf account is a secondary account used by an experienced player, typically in a lower skill level bracket. It allows them to play against less skilled opponents, often for easier wins or to play with friends of lower ranks.
So, Riot Iskar explained that the team is working on some form of smurf detection. It is on Riot to put together equal matches, hence why there will be more tools introduced to track players and their secondary accounts to make sure the skill level within games is equal.
If you are a player who wants to create a new account and play normally, we don't think there is anything wrong with that. If you are a player who wants to create a new account to run it down a bunch of games to lower your mmr and smash on low mmr players, we want to detect and ban your account.
Riot is going to continuously monitor the state of ranked, with the team changing how many games it should take players to reach their true rank. The team will continue to keep an eye on LP gains and losses to ensure that it is equal for players.
There are more issues Riot is looking into for the future, like being "hard-stuck" at one rank or adding duo-queue back to high elo, but those were only briefly touched upon in the Reddit AMA.