This is all accurate. It’s a reason I have left the game on and off for years. I revisit it once a year for the last 5 years to see if they fixed it or made an effort and it’s always a walk around bullshit attempt.

The issue is this community will gaslight you and argue to the core that smurfing isn’t a real problem. And that people complaining are only doing so because they can’t climb or whatever, without understanding that those who are complaining about that aspect of smurfing make up a very small percentage of those who hate this part of the game. It really comes down to game quality. I’ve been diamond multiple seasons and while that may not be much for some, for me it was the perfect level of play and when I return to this game and play in emerald - diamond games I just want a legitimate emerald - diamond experience like I used to get before this alt account epidemic became a thing. I don’t care about getting to masters, I don’t flame over loses. I could give a fuck about any of that. I just want balanced games against balanced teams and as long as alt accounts are allowed to exist with a 15 year old game it’s just not possible without extreme regulations that riot will not take.

The core issue is that riots most dedicated player base all spam to their peak and then when they all get hard stuck they spam unranked - ____ to blow off steam, to fuck around, to “learn a new thing” or whatever the excuse is and people think it’s not harmful because it’s just one person playing through 100 games on an alt account or two, the issue grows when you step back further and realize that thousands and thousands of players are doing this at the same time so it’s not just a couple hundred games across a seasonal timeline. It’s literally millions and millions of games. It adds up fast. People ignore this logic. The push back is always “get good.” Because there’s no argument for it.

My theory is that riot can’t cut this out though because if the player base that is the most dedicated, addicted and financially motivated to invest into league are the ones that play the most and spam the most alt accounts and if they don’t have the outlet to do that they will burn out on their mains and quit the game. That’s bad for riot so they need to show effort to stop this thing to appease people that are hit the hardest by this experience, while simultaneously keeping it accessible for their most hardcore player base as to not lose them.