Double check - have you confirmed that you've unlocked Ambessa?
We know Ambessa is too strong when people have learned her at the moment; wanted to get a clean read on her power and optimizations before nerfing her, otherwise it can be challenging to understand how her mastery curve is shaking out when it's also conflated with power adjustments.
We're pretty sure she's balance able but will just need a little bit of fine tuning to get her into a good spot
is yuumi intended to buy boots..?
its intended to be a player choice, if it wasn't we would lock her out of buying them. Which is I suppose an option but not something we are actively exploring
I can believe it ebbs and flows and I can appreciate that the Riot entity has undertaken mammoth tasks in technology, building the RSO system and transforming the original PvP.net that you worked on into a modern, multi game system.
However, and this is where I believe we have different fundamental thoughts on this,
Riot needs to crack down on account sharing, individuals with multiple accounts and gamifying the match making system.
Riot has spent more time addressing the symptoms (e.g dodge and op.gg warriors) rather than the core of the problem, that unlike valve or blizzard Riot isn't millitant on punishing rule breakers. Nor does it go strong enough in the direction of providing players with an environment that encourages engagement and improvement with the game
Best of luck to you if you do genuinely intend to solve this though, maybe you'll get to it before I lose bladder control
I don’t disagree
I mean I was in high school when you first said that I now have a mortgage
It’s an arms race. It improves and then worsens again over time and we have to be vigilant and get ahead.
Been saying that for at least a decade my dude. You don’t do anything and won’t. Especially since they’re famous streamers using Smurf accounts like crazy. I’d love to be proven wrong.
And we have improved and have made a lot more stuff that we are supporting. Are we perfect? No.
You know after playing some more games where I had smurfs in all of them all I can say is you are full of shit. “It’s against our TOS”, we’ll do something about it! It’s your job and seems like it’s not happening. Make 2FA mandatory. Otherwise you’re just a joke. It’s Riots holier than though attitude that really pisses me off.
What I am saying is that we don’t want the bad behavior - not that we are effective at stopping it sufficiently (yet).
We will improve.
Players selling accounts to each other doesn’t give us revenue
But people who got perma'd for trolling/toxicity buying accounts and re-buying skins does, stop pretending you don't know that's what people are saying
The reason things that make sense for our players don’t get executed is much more likely due to organizational misalignment and teams with competing priorities rather than any nefarious motivation. This upstream issue is the number one reason we’ve restructured the company and why we’ve made many leadership changes.
These types of changes create the conditions to do things that make sense.
We are taking a hard look at smurfing and account issues right now
*that doesn't negatively impact playrate and $ spending.
Important thing you left out.
There are countless ways to impact smurfing and other account-reselling stuff BUT if players have to do more stuff like attach phone number to your services etc then they will simply bounce away from your game.
So yeah, you want quantity not quality. And you also gaslight players and drop smoke screens everywhere. Whoever is reading this, don't even bother with serious reply. Don't work for them for free, they already have workers that should do this job. They just don't want to do anything other than make you think they do things (they actually don't or do bare minimum). I was here for 10+ years and I just know.
Maybe that’s the reason - or maybe there are other reasons?
I think we’ll be able to make progress on improving this stuff now and so believe it or not, people sharing perspective is helpful.
Ever heard of Investors and KPI's? Having lots of new active "players" in your games makes investors think the game is growing, making them more likely to invest money into your company.
Yes, I have heard of investors - Riot is privately held so we fortunately don’t have to drive the business with really dumb short term KPI’s like this and we can take a longer term value creation perspective.
Our errors are mostly to our organizational / team / people / efficacy issues, typically not due to misalignment with investors.
More accounts = more potential skin sales.
Not really: more accounts = more cost and people’s alts / throwaway / Smurf accounts tend to not buy skins
Thanks for taking part in the discussion—this is definitely a big issue, and I personally think AI could provide a solid solution for smurf and fraud account detection. An AI system could crossmatch players based on behavior patterns, IP addresses, play history, and unique in-game quirks to flag potential smurf accounts.
A key step would be making smurf accounts mandatory to link to a main Riot profile. If players don’t do this, those accounts should face bans. Toxic players with suspended mains could also be flagged by the AI and banned across all linked accounts, which would make it much harder to dodge consequences by switching accounts.
For accounts under review, a good approach could be to restrict them from Summoner’s Rift queues entirely, allowing them to play only ARAM while keeping communication channels open—either with an AI chatbot for straightforward cases or human support for more complex ones.
Implementing such an AI system would obviously require a big upfront investment, but the long-term benefits for the game would be huge. Stopping unbalanced games and reducing toxicity should be a top priority, and with AI, a viable solution could be achievable as early as mid-2025. It’s a tough challenge, but I think it’s worth the effort to improve the overall player experience.
Im working in the field of AI and in my humble opinion apart from customer support and creative writing one of the best use cases is actually controlling. AI is amazing at detecting patterns and crossmatch things based on a given ruleset. Riots problem again in my humble opinion is a numbers game. Its tough to have enough staff to look at every single game played, but if a properly trained AI it could be possible to take this approach.
The best solution but imo one that is not feasible at all would be to have everyone register their account with a real ID like drivers licences or passport. Would basically remove smurfs over night, again not a feasiable solution considering the target audience and potential fallout implementing it that late into the games cycle.
Appreciate you taking the time to write out your thoughts
Since I've got you on the horn, my background was fraud account detection at ebay and my education was forensic investigation. I do QA automation and API testing at the moment.
The pattern to find this account, and the hundreds more linked to it, would take me a day to write. I'd be happy to do that if I knew it would be put to use. Hell I'll pass on the names of the accounts if you want them to start your own search!
I’ll flag this note to the team - thx!
China has a large market. So the accounts are farmed there. Pro player or someone buys this account and gets some skins on it that they may have on their other accounts: profit. Not hard to figure out Tryn and I like you. 2FA on accounts. We need it. I believe DOTA has it and they don’t complain about it ”we can’t!!”. I just feel like the new Riot games doesn’t give a shit about the integrity of the game, but a bottom line for corporate overlords, which I get honestly. Sorry I’m ranting now. It’s just sucks to see a game I highly regarded as the best become a joke over time. It’s the Game of Thrones of video games lol: amazing beginning that got progressively worse.
We have 2FA.
Players selling accounts to each other doesn’t give us revenue and it’s against our TOS.
Most player accounts don’t spend any money.
Open to solutions!
More accounts to buy the same skins from mains? The one trick riven (just picking on riven) will buy the same skin on account 1/2/3/4/5, unless you have the data that shows otherwise. Hardware banning with Vanguard isn’t the magical fix, we understand this. Simply make these accounts only able to queue into vs AI and not players. What this will do is stop the rampant selling of accounts since you will only be able to play vs AI. You can place flags on these accounts and see the behavior and if it’s a false positive you can take said flag off.
I appreciate that you’re willing to engage with the community and I apologize if my comment comes off as rude or disrespectful but riot has the data and ability to stop this and the only obvious reason is money.
It’s not an easy problem to solve. We are taking a hard look at smurfing and account issues right now so feedback is very welcome.
It’s very simple, riot doesn’t want this to stop. If it ever stops them from making money? Then it will be addressed.
Otherwise GG go next is the only answer one can really give 🤷♂️
How does this make us money?
So then what about more fringe champs in need of VGU’s, when is someone like Nocturne who doesn’t fit into regions well supposed to get a VGU?
Theme for a season won’t always be focused on a faction necessarily, so non faction affiliated characters should still have opportunities
About the Elixir restrictions thing:
Elixirs still replaced each other if you activated them. You could still have one of each in your inventory, but you couldn't have more than one of any individual Elixir in your inventory. It also didn't prevent you from rebuying an elixir that was already active
I suspect it was a leftover from the tested Endless Elixirs rune ("elixirs can be stacked and do not expire") requiring you to be limited to one of each Elixir type. Item exclusion rules like this are handled by assigning items to a "group", and one of the many features of a group is the ability to limit you to a set number of items from that group at once (usually just one).
However, groups can also have their limits overridden by scripts (this is how Cassio passive locks her out of boots, by setting her Boots limit to zero, as well as when Arena had an augment allowing any number of Mythic items, by setting the Mythic item group limit to six). I imagine Riot intended to support Endless Elixirs locking you out of Elixirs you have already used by giving them each their own group and then setting each group's limit to zero as you used them to prevent you from wasting gold.
The rune got scrapped but maybe parts of it still leaked through for a bit given they have before, which is the only reason we know they tested it at all. When that rune accidentally shipped, it also came with the "minimum level: 9 --> 12" change (but only on the tooltip), so it might all be related to that still.
Your theories on Elixirs are largely correct
How does the new Ward runes works with Fiddlesticks passive? Like Deep Ward/Grisly Mementos
Fiddle gets swapped off of Deep Ward if he tries to take it. Grisly Mementos will reduce the CD on his effigy
Bug: Inconsistence proccing of Bloodletter's Curse
As far as I know, these can grant stacks while they are not supposed to, according to the gray clarifying text (haven't tested imperial mandate yet cause all my friends are asleep so I can't try):
Comet (weirdly enough, only proc when you are outside of like 800 range based of my eyeballing)
Luden's Companion (but only if there is a champion nearby the original target)
Press the attack's 3rd hit
Lethal tempo maxed stack
Electrocute
Shield bash
Dark Harvest
Grasp
AftershockAnd aside from that, Teemo shroom DoT cannot proc it. Idk about other champions tho
We'll look into it, thank you