This post is to help address some of the most common posts in this subreddit:

• Smurfs (especially at lower ranks)
• Being in ELO hell and not being able to carry yourself out of a certain rank

I am a casual player, I have been playing FPS for a long time (CS 1.5) and am currently Plat on my main account and Iron/Bronze on my Alt. My alt account is used to play with friends and just generally play silly things like utility only, knife only, classic only, etc. I rarely carry/throw on my alt account with a few exceptions where I try "even the teams".

On my alt account I have experienced at least one smurf/deranker in roughly 2/3 of my games not including myself. It's gotten so bad that there are games where I literally have to try balance the power dynamic of many games:

In this game, we actually had two smurfs, the Jett vs the Reyna. Obviously the Reyna was the higher ranked smurf and the game ended up going in our favor despite me \"throwing\".

This is me trying to lessen the blow of a severe loss due to a deranker. I also suspect there were some \"smurfs\" on the other team. I received 2 down rank arrows here.

More smurfs causing the other team to surrender

The issue with smurfing is two fold:

First there is no punishment for derankers and bad faith actors. You literally receive a comms ban. I laugh when people say "I've banned people before". This does not happen

Second, individual performance is not taken to account properly when determining your rank. In the middle game shown above, you can see that there is a clear deranker on the team and I am playing exceptionally well compared with anyone else. I suspect this is a common occurrence in the lower ranks. People will often say "well you can just carry!" not recognizing the skill gap required to actually rank up. Could I have won that game? Probably if I played serious, but I am literally playing people 10 ranks below me, the skill gap is immense. Imagine if this was a silver player level player stuck in this game, and they did as well as me and then you receive 2 down arrows. This is the issue many players are facing.

In the next game, I literally ran into a team of derankers. This caused me to actually derank to back to Iron. I have no issue with this, but put yourself in the shoes of a player who is trying to climb. I just played the game of my life dealing with a deranker in one game, then I literally run into a full team of derankers:

We surrendered at half.

Solution:

First individual performance needs to be taken into account more here. I should not have lost 2 down arrows in a game where I clearly played above the other players in the server despite the loss. Deranking me causes either a lot of unintentional smurfs as well as allows bad faith smurfs who stomp games to continue to be in lower ranked games ruining more lower ranked games for more players.

Second Riot needs to implement bans with actual teeth. A comms ban does nothing. Riot needs to implement competitive bans. I know they are worried about losing players, but smurfs will just create more accounts, or just play on their main. It is actually worse for Riot in the long run when lower ranked players invest their time and run into the terrible experience I have.

A replay system needs to be implemented immediately along with a Tribunal/Overwatch system to review and ban players. With the release of high quality skins nearly every week , it is clear where Riot's resources are being focused. This isn't a fledgling company anymore, Riot is owned by a Tencent, a company with a market cap of over $726 Billion. The fact that a replay system has not been shipped with this game upon release in 2020 is inexcusable.

tl:dr: Ranked experience is bad at lower ranks filled with derankers or smurfs. Individual performance needs better evaluation for people trying to climb. No more excuses for Riot, they need to immediately implement better bans and a replay + Tribunal/Overwatch system. Otherwise Riot is going to see a lot of players leave the game.