Riot Games will be taking strong actions against smurfs in VALORANT as they ruin the experience for new players.
In a recent ask VALORANT session, Riot Games agreed that smurfing in free-to-play games is always going to be a thing. However, they are planning on implementing such a system in ranked and unrated that will identify these smurfs faster than before.
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Furthermore, Riot is also trying to figure out these smurfs very early and boost them to harder and higher ranks in competitive. Since these smurfs can have really negative impact on players’ rank experience, Riot will take appropriate actions to combat the rising number of smurf accounts in VALORANT.
Riot takes smurfing seriously in VALORANT:
“Right now we have a behind-the-scenes system for Unrated as well as one that applies to Iron through Diamond ranked players. The latter tracks an individual’s performance and notices when a player makes a highly disproportionate impact in a game. We then quickly boost them to harder matches and higher ranks in Competitive.“, Ian Fielding, Senior Producer on smurfs.
As of now, Riot Games is testing out some of the ways they can effectively deal with the smurf accounts without impacting normal players’ gameplay experiences.
“We stop leveraging this system for Immortal+ players because there isn’t a ton of room to smurf or play down when you are already near the top ranks. Longer term, we’re also looking at ways to further accelerate placing smurfs into appropriately skilled matches. But right now we are prioritizing some improvements to our core rank system and leaderboards ahead of that.” Ian Fielding, Senior Producer further explained.
Seems like Riot Games will be making decisions based upon their experience in dealing with Smurfs in League of Legends. They already have a lot of experience in dealing with similar issues. Surely they will use their expertise to make the ranking experience much better for lower-ranked players.
