When I first started playing in season 3, I knew my first season that I’d be in bronze. I was bad. I accepted that. Through placements I tried my best and with considerable effort for me back then, I ended my first season in silver.

Next time, I wanted to get to gold. I wanted to claim that I was good enough to get a victorious skin. For the next several seasons I played to win but didn’t really know how and as a result I struggled to get through silver and was overjoyed when I first reached Gold and got my hands on Victorious Maokai.

The same thing for a few more seasons and I eventually decided to start trying to climb and reached my goal of Plat.

This season, seeing emerald, I put it as my goal and worked hard to better many of the mistakes that I had in my gameplay and worked my way up the ranks to hit emerald and it felt great.

That was until I started to realize that so many of the team mates I ended up with are fresh accounts to ranked. Not even accounts that have lucked into a win on their first placement, I’m talking accounts with literally nothing but beginner bots to their name.

For how much emphasis Riot puts on their E-Sport, for how much they push for the competitive integrity of their game with constant patches and clash and the promotion of it in the client, Ranked is obviously the primary focus of the game.

What is the point of trying to climb through ranks when buying a botted account it’s so clearly the definitive way to reach your desired rank? Diamond and elite players aren’t deterred by the prospect of having to play through 50+ games just to get to their rank again so they can happily sink a few dollars on a new account if they get banned, lower players have almost nothing to really strive for and the rewards that used to incentivize so much of the player base they just get anyway.

I’ve got many friends who were hardstuck silver and were putting in all their effort to climb and then bought new accounts to try and see what it was like only to end up with hollow victories.