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An Intelligent and Informed Explaination for Uninstalling For The Fourth Time

Birdie Sanders·10/10/2014, 6:23:20 AM·6 votes·2,439 views

Incoming wall of text.

TL;DR Sorry Rito, I'm out. Here's why.

Alright. I was a moron and decided to re-install League after quitting in Season 3. I knew it was a mistake when I did it, but I did it anyway. 'Maybe it's gotten better', I thought. 'Maybe I really was just playing really badly.'

I'm afraid that's not the case. I've been stuck in Gold 5 since mid-season 2, which was after 14 promos from Silver. I've been stuck there ever since. Every single game I get I seem to be guaranteed at least one player who is either bad mannered, unskilled or, for some reason or another, does not belong in my game. Inevitably they are the trigger that causes the whole game to collapse.

Occasionally that player is me. I'm not so deluded to say it isn't; but more often than I care to count it's a jungler who can't gank, or an ADC who has 100 CS by 23 minutes. A Fizz who constantly attacks a Syndra, despite being 0/7 by ten minutes. On the flipside, the other team is roughly competent. Sometimes there's a moron there who gets carried or loses them the game after my struggling for 50 minutes to wrangle the drooling cats that are my teammates. Every single victory in my last 30 games has been hard-earned and by the skin of our teeth. After many of them I actually feel drained, as if I completed some great task and I can't believe it's finally over.

Quite frankly, I'm done. Your matchmaking system is simply ineffective. Whether someone wins or loses is not an accurate representation of their skill. Perhaps you should take a look at Heroes of the Storm for this. Their matchmaking is based upon kills, deaths, assists, and a little thing called Mechanics. It's a beautiful system that makes sure that you are almost always placed with players on your level.

Your matchmaking is filled with ELO boosting and great players who rocket out of Bronze and Silver. It's a great thing that you can fly out of there if you're good enough, but you bring a lot of idiots with you. These morons get placed into games they don't belong as their MMR falls back to where it needs to be, which ruins the game for four other people who may belong higher. This means there is a constant flow of unskilled players between Silver II and Gold III that make mistakes and play like a Silver V or a Bronze I. The flow of players is constant and once they get down to their normal MRR they can be carried up again, which starts the whole process over again. It's an looping waterfall of fail, and If you're not at least Plat 4 skillwise than you can't leave.

I'm afraid I just can't be a part of this system anymore. Whether it be luck or confirmation bias I have been stuck in this constant loop of displaced players who are on their way down. Instead of getting dragged up from where I am to where I don't belong I am stuck playing these soul-sucking, funless games that are so often and so frustrating that I have gone from being angry to just being sad. Regardless of whether you believe me or not, no one should get to this point by playing your game. Something is fundamentally wrong.

Until you fix your matchmaking system to be more comprehensive and find a way to deal with toxic players and ELO inflation I simply cannot play this game. It's a shame; there's really no better games out right now, and I do enjoy playing this game. I've tried to come back over and over yet still it's the same problem. In fact my friends refuse to play with me because it seems bad players follow me. It doesn't matter if I win my lane; our jungler is going to be an idiot. Our ADC is going to not know how to farm or how to not stand in melee range. This has gone on too long to be confirmation bias or a statistical anomaly. Something is truly broken, and so until it's fixed I must leave.

Oh, and I know one person leaving is really no big deal. You have 32 million players. But let me ask you this: how many people do you think are having a similar experience to me? How many people do you think will leave once a viable game is released? Perhaps one like Heroes of the Storm? I'm starting to think your massive playerbase is not exactly related to how good your game is, but is instead because of a lack of alternatives.

I really enjoy LCS and Worlds. I would really like to play games where I feel I'm engaged instead of dragging my ill-mannered and unobservant teammates from fighting after we get dragon, or staying too long after getting an inhib, or begging the jungler to not farm bot while Baron is up. I feel like these things are pretty straight-forward and generally pretty simple, yet these things happen time and time again in my games. I can safely say 75% of my games are like this, and I'm afraid that's just not okay.

Oh and while I'm at it, you guys really need to take a hard look at old champions. For example, Cho'Gath does not need so much sustain on his passive. He's absolutely immovable from lane with it, as well as insane harass, on top of AP-scaling true damage, sprinkled with a knockup-slow on a relatively short cooldown. It was certainly required in earlier seasons, but is unbalanced in today's game. There are only a few champions who are in this place, but when they are chosen in specific matchups they are utterly devastating and way beyond their designed power level.

Also Poppy. I don't think I need to elaborate.

I really hope you guys find a solution to these problems. It's time to bring League's matchmaking into the 21 century because the current ELO system just isn't working.

63 Comments

Raptamei10/10/2014, 6:30:01 AM4 votes

I just find it funny that the community says for 5 years that KDA-based matchmaking is impossible and then Blizzard just goes and does it. Just like Dota has free to leave a 4v5 and it works there too.

Should be a wake-up call for Riot.

Blizzard's secret? They modified the rules to make KDA matchmaking work. And that's good; MOBA rules are by no means sacred.

Long Dong Wukong10/10/2014, 8:50:48 AM4 votes

Oh by the way, git gud. You're just another standard moba player that thinks everything except YOU is keeping you back. You aren't actually as good as you think you are. You don't actually understand the game as well as you think you do. You aren't actually as aware of what you should be doing or how you should reacting as well as you think you are.

If you're better than the division you climb eventually, period. If you're significantly better, you rocket straight through the whole tier. You've been Gold 5 for years. You're a Gold 5 player. Spend the time to actually learn and you might just get somewhere.

Tserris10/10/2014, 6:54:33 AM3 votes

I've played this game off and on for three years, of my three ranked accounts I've trudged two out of the silver-gold vortex you mentioned, one as high as diamond and one merely plat. The third is perpetually stuck between silver 1 and gold 2, on this particular account I am constantly experiencing uncharacteristically bad luck with matchmaking -so bad that it feels pointed, and deliberate in contrast to my luck on my other two ranked accounts. It's one of those things that just gets under my skin and never comes out. No matter how many wards I place, no matter how many wards I clear, objectives I claim, roams, ganks, kills, no matter how impressive my personal performance there is a simple and fundamental fact that an enemy team that is handily ahead on gold due to the seemingly mindless maneuvers my team tries while obviously being in positions where nothing positive can come of such obviously bad decisions, is simply too much for a single relatively skilled player to handle.

Determining an individual person's skill level by basing the scoring system on external and unrelated statistics that account for a loss or a win is absolute and complete madness. It makes no sense, and until it starts making sense we're going to see comprehensive complain posts about the horrible matchmaking system, such as this.

Jryiah10/10/2014, 10:29:59 AM2 votes

Why not play normal blinds? Shinny EPEEN badge is 100% useless anyways.

Imperial Red10/10/2014, 6:57:52 AM1 votes

See ya

Birdie Sanders10/15/2014, 7:27:30 AM1 votes

Yep. Tried again. Maybe Long Dong was right and I was just bad.

My match history is now impressive. I have lost 70% of my games. A great deal of them because of AFKs or intentional feeding, although no more than normal. Supposedly you auto-win and lose 45% of games, so that's accounted for.

No. I lost many more because of feeding junglers and supports who just sit back and do nothing. I tried maining my strongest toon, even switched up my roles, runes, everything. Doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how hard I carry or how well my mechanics are; if there's a feeding jungler or just one really shit person on my team then it's an auto-lose.

I'm officially done. Here's to hoping the games are different in Preseason, because I'm so beyond fucking done trying to climb out of this stinking Hell-hole that is Gold 5.

And to all you who say 'git gud' and other inane nonsense, fuck you sideways with a rake. You don't play my games or even bother to look at my stats. You have no idea how much effort and energy I've put into improving and winning these games. You have no clue what my history is in gaming. You simply don't know what I'm capable of. Shit, I barely do.

And telling me to carry and not worry about my team is a cop-out. This is a fucking team game and your team is only as strong as your weakest link. Thanks a fucking bunch for that, Riot. You've made it so that we're fighting the enemy team as well as our own teammates. You've created the most toxic game in the world and everyone seems to just run on hate. Good fucking job.

So here's to hoping Riot can fix some of this bullshit with the Preseason. I'm definitely not fucking optimistic, but shit at this point why not?

Junkο10/10/2014, 4:55:51 PM1 votes

Oh and while I'm at it, you guys really need to take a hard look at old champions. For example, Cho'Gath does not need so much sustain on his passive. He's absolutely immovable from lane with it, as well as insane harass, on top of AP-scaling true damage, sprinkled with a knockup-slow on a relatively short cooldown. It was certainly required in earlier seasons, but is unbalanced in today's game. There are only a few champions who are in this place, but when they are chosen in specific matchups they are utterly devastating and way beyond their designed power level.

I'm sorry but i CANNOT take this seriously at all.

ModUlanopo10/10/2014, 6:31:19 AM1 votes

Well, at least you mentioned confirmation bias.