The glaring issue with placement matches and promo games

Gorsz·1/22/2015, 9:43:51 PM·1 votes·480 views

The problem with placements is the same exact problem with promotion games.

To find your true elo you're supposed to play X amount of games and win over time, so why in the world does a few promotion games or a handful of placement games affect your MMR and/or progression by so much? Even someone like Faker has what? 55% total win rate in solo queue?

Someones skill cannot be judged by placements especially in a game with so many random variables.

Yes, I know the argument of "well if you deserved such and such rank you could climb back to there". Yes, that is true, but it seems more like a gimmick to get people to keep people playing by grinding back up because there is no fair, nor logical reason for these arbitrary systems to be in place except to benefit Riot Games.

6 Comments

Matthias91191/22/2015, 11:18:02 PM2 votes

Promotion series between leagues (silver->gold, for example) make sense because it is VERY hard to drop between leagues. You could argue that the ones between divisions in the same league are not necessary. Riot has said part of the reason for them is to break up the monotony of climbing, and also that having some games matter more seems to be less stressful for players than having EVERY game feel critical if you're near a division breakpoint.

Placement matches generally get players close to their correct rank much faster. Increased rating variance for new players is a standard feature of many skill rating systems, including Elo (which Riot's MMR system is based off of). The idea of redoing placements each season is that the game has changed significantly enough that players may need to be substantially rerated, and just doing an MMR reset without placements would result in many high-ranked players having to grind a long way back up. It also gives players who had a bad rating in the previous season a chance to quickly move up several divisions if their skills have significantly improved.

There's definitely some downside risk for players near median skill who get bad luck in placements, but the positives likely outweigh that.

Gorsz1/22/2015, 9:49:28 PM1 votes

bump

SmokingPuffin1/22/2015, 10:00:03 PM1 votes

seems more like a gimmick to get people to keep people playing by grinding back up

ding ding ding

Yakas1/22/2015, 10:04:52 PM1 votes

Let's all get demoted kids. Just to work our way up to where we were before...