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Statistics showing why the game/matchmaking #feelsbad

HeeroTX··48 votes·13,106 views

Matchmaking feels terrible, but I don't think it's entirely a disparity between team skill so much as Riot has (intentionally) made the game MUCH more snowbally and so most games are effectively "over" much faster than before. People like pointing to "League of Graphs" to show that games are basically the same as they've always been, here's stats proving the core difference in what the game was vs what it is now. The following are comparisons between Playoffs (Quarters thru Finals) for Summer 2015 (when League arguably "peaked" in popularity) vs. Spring 2019 (most recent playoffs)

Summer 2015 Average Gametime: 39:12 mins Longest game: 55:09 Shortest game: 27:18 Median game: 39:00 Percentage of games where both teams took at least 4 towers (broke beyond the front line): 41 % Percentage of games where one team took 1 or less towers: 6 %

Spring 2019 Average Gametime: 34:05 Longest game: 45:20 Shortest game: 24:03 Median game: 32:52 Percentage of games where both teams took at least 4 towers (broke beyond the front line): 23 % Percentage of games where one team took 1 or less towers: 27 %

In Summer 2015 playoffs, approx 17% of games went longer than the longest Spring 2019 playoffs game. In Spring 2019 playoffs, approx 23% of games were SHORTER than the fastest Summer 2015 playoffs game. Summer 2015 playoffs had ZERO games where one team didn't take any opposing towers, Spring 2019 had 3 such games. Basically, based on pro-stats (which I admit does not fully translate) you'd have maybe 1 in 20 games where your team got so smashed you could barely take a single turret, now that is 1 in 4.

Even at the highest level, your average game is 5 mins faster and the disparity between the winner and loser is much wider. And the average game would probably be even faster if pro players ever forfeited LCS games, as happens all the time outside pro-play.

32 Comments

Mr Tyson8 votes

S5 was the juggernaut patch. One of worst in history, best was Season 4. FYI :)

Aatrox Airlines1 votes

Speak for yourself. Some liked it, some did not.

MAY I LEAD6 votes

This is the best post I have seen on this board in a very long time. Thank you.

Mártir6 votes

Lol, you are bringing Stadistics of Competitive Play... That is BS.

You have to show Stadistics of non-competitive. And there is proof they are pretty much the same.

PS: Season 5 was Juggernaut/Tank Meta, that was a Bad season.

Aatrox Airlines1 votes

tank meta was bad season

Speak for yourself, thats an opinion not a fact

GigglesO6 votes

{quoted}

Matchmaking feels terrible, but I don't think it's entirely a disparity between team skill so much as Riot has (intentionally) made the game MUCH more snowbally and so most games are effectively "over" much faster than before.

Apparently There is this estimate that USA lol players are only 3% of the population...

Makes sense why they would cater to the Chinese. We literally don't have an opinion.

https://lolskinshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/worldmap-lss2.png

https://lolskinshop.com/how-many-players-are-still-playing-league-of-legends-in-2019-is-league-of-legends-dying/

voidscaler1 votes

China ruining things for everyone else

Dynikus4 votes

These were intentional changes to try to avoid the not-that-uncommon hour+ matches that most people hated.

WoonStruck34 votes

That's why the shorter game modes that are being deleted were there.

Oops, Riot let them rot then decided to delete them.

Also, hour-long matches were not that common unless your team refused to group and actually end the match...which isn't on the system.

Hong Kong Annie13 votes

I see a much bigger problem. They are deleting the faster game modes because nobody plays them, then turn around and try to speed up the pace of summoners rift. It's almost like players prefer the longer and slower paced games of summoners rift, and dislike the faster snowball of the other game modes.

But what do I know Riot obviously thinks otherwise.

Dig Black Bick1 votes

I dont see any TT games played. If you dont play it yourself, why you write such a thing? People who talk about not removing TT usually have around 10 games played. Funny

WoonStruck3 votes

I played less after they redid the map, and even less then because certain things were forced bans and you always had the same roster of 10 or so to choose from if you didnt want to lose.

People stopped playing for reasons riot could have addressed. Not because it was an unwanted game mode.

voidscaler2 votes

No fucking TT games were played because the last update for it was 4 years ago, it's a balance nightmare that's been left to rot, if riot had given a sine shit about it they would have given it balance patches, instead they left it by the wayside and are now LITERALLY doing weekly patches in a fucking mobile game in tft

Disulfiram2 votes

What if they took a page out of Blitz's? Something like "after x minutes (let's say 50), if the game is not over then both Nexi get up and duke it out in the middle of the map". That would put an hard cap on game length without having to make games this snowbally.

HeeroTX3 votes

If eSports thinks game length is a problem, then should just match "regular" sports: Game time is X (let's say 45 mins).
If you destroy Nexus before 45 mins, you win, period. If neither Nexus is destroyed by 45 mins, most inhibs wins. If score/inhibs are tied at 45 mins, sudden death (ie. play until one team takes an inhib)

HeeroTX13 votes

Personally I considered 45 min (the length of the LONGEST Spring 2019 playoffs game) to be the minimum for a GOOD game (as a player, but I also didn't mind watching 45+ min games, your average football game is normally around 3 HOURS of broadcast time). If you think 40-45 mins should be the max (or is "too long") then Riot needs to make NB permanent for people like you.

DapaSquid4 votes

{quoted}

These were intentional changes to try to avoid the not-that-uncommon hour+ matches that most people hated.

Tbh imo, if people hated hour long games (which is what league was known for) then they should have played another game entirely.

Kiwi Lemonade2 votes

I don't remember that many more "hour long games" in fact most games back then ended within 30-40 range. End-game teamfights were still just as deadly thanks to timers. Baron was particularly strong to take. "Breaking the Base" was actually difficult to do, and was the way to win. Also, I don't know about anyone else, but in the very few games that took an hour - its usually ranked games, since no one cares that much in normals to not FF at the lost teamfight at 35m, and Hour long ranked games feel like a rush, every movement nail-biting since every second could brew a teamfight. Losing it felt bad sure, but I almost always felt like I put a lot of effort into it, at least. And winning well - winning felt amazing.

Now, most games have an inhibitor taken by 20minutes. Twenty. Minutes. Statistics further show that by taking an inhibitor this early (without losing one of your own) your chances are winning are 95%. Most games don't even have Baron or Elder even taken at all to win. There is no siege, theres only who picks a kill first and makes it a 4v5. Duels between champions last 1-2s, then one dies. For someone in Hawaii with 120ping on a good day, its been rough lately, I usually have to resort to Jungle or Support with an Enchanter, since I cannot keep up between the minute my character moves a pixel out of place Akali hit me with her E and theres nothing, not even Flash, that I can do to live.

Garen is adopted1 votes

{quoted}

These were intentional changes to try to avoid the not-that-uncommon hour+ matches that most people hated.

yeah i hated so much to not see enemy jungler always on my lane and mine just afk farming and my bot lane dying every 35-60 seconds

Sherogarth2 votes

Could you by any chance compare min, max and average gold gained in those two seasons? I wonder if items are aquired much faster nowadays compared to 2015.

Mr Tyson1 votes

A key contributing factor is the skill increase of players. When a team has a gold lead, high skill teams won't allow the enemy back into the game whatsoever. That is Towers/Dragons/Barons. As one team gets an objective, that makes it even more difficult for the enemy to take an objective. Advantages snowball into further advantages. Strategy games tend to operate like this.

HeeroTX8 votes

Playoffs is the top half of the league in terms of skill, you're talking 6 teams (aka literally just 30 players total). A disparity where one team is basically unable to take even a single turret shouldn't happen at that level in roughly 25% of your games. If you want to say the disparity between #1 and #10 (and you're still talking theoretically the top 50 players in the game) is such that #1 consistently smashes #10, then... ok I guess?

But last spring had TWO games in the semifinals where the loser didn't take a single turret. And what I'm saying, is that if you're mid-low elo, with a bunch of randos on your team, you're gonna blame all of them for sucking when even at the highest level it's REALLY easy for a game to snowball out of control like that.

Mr Tyson1 votes

Its not necessarily about that. Jayce is a lane dominant champion. Teams can put large amounts of resources top lane, get kills/plate/deny exp and get big advantages. If the other team misplays around top, or fails to get an advantage in another part of the map, then there is a large discrepancy. One team is very far ahead and the other team got nothing during that time. That is how games can snowball uncontrollably. Its not that one team is less skilled than the other, its that one got advantages where the other didn't. And because they are skilled, they can choke them out of the game with little fallback for the other team.

Think of a game of chess. You have 2 good players. They can have a game where each one takes pieces from the other and eventually one player gets an advantage and closes out the game. In another game, one player blunders early , and the other gets a strong advantage. At that point, the game just might be over, not because he is unskilled, but because one player has a strong advantage and knows how to close out the game.

As players get better in skill, it becomes easier to close out games from advantages.

Hong Kong Annie2 votes

But that snowball shouldn't happen so fast that the other team couldn't take a single tower. Using your chess example that would be like one player losing three or four major pieces and only getting pawns in return. That would never happen at the highest level of play.

HeeroTX2 votes

My OPINION, is that the current design leads to a bad game state, but that's just my personal opinion on the matter. What I'm trying to say with the original post is that it ALSO makes games feel "unfair" or radically uneven simply because the mechanics allow for one team to snowball out of control even at the highest level.

People "feel" like the game is fair if you have a relatively even game, if you feel like you have as much chance of winning at minute 30 as you had at minute 1. (just to be realistic, let's say you have a window of maybe as much as 5 minutes at the end where you know the game is over it just takes that long to actually enact the finishing touches) I'm saying in a LARGE number of games, the game is basically over (due to enemy being able to snowball) really early AND the result of that is it FEELS like the game was badly matched in champ select (due to unbalanced player selection), but the fact may be that it was perfectly balanced at game start, but 1 or 2 mistakes put 1 or 2 players ahead and the game is deemed irrecoverable and AFTER the fact everyone thinks the player that made the mistakes sucks or was "boosted" or put on my team to "screw" me, but instead the enemy (who is of equal skill) was just able to snowball HARD due to game mechanics.

Again, just to add my OPINION, I think it's bad design for someone to be able to snowball THAT hard and that easily in a team based strategy game. (I say that largely because my "default" mindset is a defensive one, it's why I like LATE game champs, but I rarely get to benefit from that because early game champs can snowball too easily)

Mr Tyson1 votes

Amen to that. Matchmaking does seem broken. Some people don't fall in rank no matter how badly they play.

Its not really the design of the game though, naturally, players are trying to win. They want to figure out the best way to win. They want the best runes, the best champs, and play the best macro. Both teams tend to 'agree' on a meta and play similarly. When the equilibrium breaks, the losing team can't do much. If there was something that the losing team could do, why wouldn't the winning team do it? And because they are winning, they have the higher chance of success.

Teams also try to figure out whats the best thing to do once you have the advantage. As time goes on, and we figure out what gives bigger advantages, the snowball that occurs after an advantage will increase as time goes on.

Tomoe Gozen1 votes

People "feel" like the game is fair if you have a relatively even game, if you feel like you have as much chance of winning at minute 30 as you had at minute 1.

This is not possible. 30 minutes is late game. You can't have the same chances of victory, unless the game is relatively dead even in CS, gold and objectives between teams. Losing a person in a 30 minute mark (depending on who) can turn the tide of the battle easily due to longer death timers.

Losing a Jungler could mean you lose the smite control over Baron/Elder. Losing a Support would mean less team protection. Losing a Marksman means loss of DPS. Losing a Mid means loss of burst or CC control. Losing a Top means losing an initiator.

In the early game, this doesn't matter that much simply because the teams themselves have no power to push into the enemy base and win and therefore, early-mid game is impactful for winrate to a certain extent (getting the enemy faster to their power spikes) but not so much that you can't turn it around with good fights. At minute 30, you lose a person and since everyone's more or less fed, your team lacks something that they can't do without or they have to balance the scale by killing the respective enemy target in return, which can be a difficult thing to do, given a 4v5 scenario and the risk of losing more people and ultimately, ending the game.

The thing i think people have a problem with is that sometimes, it's still possible to lose the game early and not have it be recoverable and therefore - people blame the matchmaking and damage numbers incorrectly. Those "impossible" games are games where the team doesn't mesh well with picks and most likely, in player response so they basically let the enemy get all the advantages and don't even play to their strengths which ultimately costs them more and more resources around the map.

What Riot did in these games is, they made them end quicker. If the games cannot be won due to players' continuous errors and unwillingness to play together, there's no point in being stuck in an unwinnable game for 30 straight minutes and feeling like a prisoner because people don't want to surrender out of spite.

JRobin313 votes

Except that when players increase in skill in chess the effect is that games become closer and end in more draws. I don't know if you payed any attention to the most recent World Chess Championship between Magnus Carlson and Fabiano Caruana, but it's case in point.

So while it may be true that skilled players snowball mistakes harder, skilled players also make fewer mistakes that can be snowballed. This means that RIOT's changes have had the effect of counteracting the natural effects of increased skill in the game... which actually surprises me. I did not expect the statistics to support that theory.

Mr Tyson1 votes

You are correct in Chess.

A couple differences in chess:

  1. Both players use the same pieces. League has unique champions on each side.
  2. Chess has perfect vision. League has fog of war. Players can do interesting things, and you aren't fully aware its happening like chess.
  3. Chess rules of the pieces have been consistent for over 100 years. Pawns have never been buffed to move more than they currently do. Matchups are changing because the balance of League is dynamic.

Your points on chess are correct though. The players are not making incorrect decisions, and advantages aren't being gained. If that did happen in league, it would be similar to s7 championship, where both teams go to 6 items and have 1 major team fight to decide the game.

JRobin313 votes

We could maybe try to compare LoL to Poker where the cards provide unique pieces on both/all sides. Some cards are hidden (like fog of war); players have to guess what cards other players have. And poker can be played with rules variations: wild cards of various sorts, etc. ... in which case, the game length increases with increased skill. Of course, in professional games they implement increases in minimum bids at regular time intervals as a way to introduce time pressure and cause games to end in a more timely manner. In poker, we also see the common situation arise where players acquire a lead and use the lead to snowball to a larger lead.

I think it's fine that RIOT implements time pressure in the game to increase the chances of the game resolving (ending), but what about the difference in tower takes?

Leetri1 votes

Those stats don't really prove anything though since they're from pro games and that's a completely different game to what 99,99999999999% of all players play. Unless your argument is that matchmaking feels bad IN PRO GAMES this does nothing to support your argument, would've done just as much by providing stats of deaths by lightning strikes.

Kovorix1 votes

Atleast shortes game is 24:03 and not 6min games like last season lol.

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