https://imgur.com/a/FxuO6O5

In gold/Plat elo right now there is so much smurfing and boosting going on which is old news and has ben complained about many times. But Riot's changes to the system/elo/ranked in Act 2 have actually compounded this issue to make games even worse.

In this game, the Brim on my team was a Silver 2 last season, and were facing an almost full Plat team vs a gold team. The reason why? Reyna's MMR/Hidden Elo on my team was way beyond his rank. This is because Reyna was smurfing - he admitted to being diamond 2 last season and was smurfing. So in Riot's eyes this is a fair match-up because he was getting 30 kills every game in previous games. The problem with a work-around solution to "allowing smurfs to rank up faster" is that it makes the game unenjoyable for EVERYONE except the smurfer. Basically what happened in this game is Reyna got 35 kills, but everyone else on my team got destroyed because the other team was 3-4 ranks higher on average. We ended up losing 13 - 9 which I guess is a "fair close game", but I was 2nd on my team in kills and only had 13, and the Reyna wanted to FF from the 2nd round because he "didn't care and was abandoning this account anyways since his hidden elo had gotten too high". So yes the game might have been fair from an avg skill stand point, but from an enjoyment perspective, nobody on my team was having any fun whatsoever. And Yes Riot accomplished their goal of making the smurf rank up faster in the short-run, but at the expense of everyone else's enoyment of the game, and that player wasn't even keeping that account anyways (most smurfs sell, or re-make a new smurf account anyways).

The entire argument of you get smurfs on your team and sometimes you are against them is dumb, because as a solo player I am much more likely to play against a smurf than to play with one. And more importantly playing WITH a smurf is just as unenjoyable as playing against one.

I don't understand why Riot doesn't just make the ranked requirement 30 unrated wins instead of 10 or something much more in tune with CSGO and other competitive games. Instead they try these work-around strategies to change elo/matchmaking/rank system which actually makes the problem worse because they are not addressing the issues directly. A brand new player just trying the game probably needs those 30 unrated wins to even understand all the maps and agent abilities. There's no reason to make it so easy to create new accounts other than to appease smurfers now that at high elo the wait time has been severely reduced for games.

The only excuse I can think of for having a smurf/alt is playing with friends that are too low/high and for that there is always unranked games. Or at least they can be limited to ONE smurf/Alt because grinding more than 1-2 would take months. But the truth is most smurfs I play against try hard and are not partied because they are playing with friends - or IF they are partied it is with ANOTHER smurf, and they want to boost their own egos.

Finally this isn't just a handful of times this happens, I honestly get smurfs in 1/4 to 1/3 of my games. It's easy to tell because they have either no ranked badge prior, or have a full "bronze" badge and are gold 2-3 now and get 30+ kills. The movement and aim and game sense are just on another level compared to everyone else. It's not just "a player having a great game". Yes not all 20 or 30 bombs are smurfs. I get 20 or 30 kills in matches in rare occasions as well. But it's HOW they play and almost always instalock reyna or Jett.

TLDR - The Smurfing issue has become even worse with the new ranked changes. Riot needs to address smurfing DIRECTLY and IMO smurfing is the biggest problem with Valorant right now. (slightly ahead of run and gun, for me)