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New players automatically placed in Iron

jmreynolds57··2 votes·2,739 views

I've been playing league for about a year or two now, having just played norms for that amount of time. I have about 900 games played on my account, and when I play with some of my friends who are Plat or Diamond, I usually do pretty well and hold my own. However, upon completing some preseason placements, I found that I was immediately placed into Iron IV. I proceeded to get 3 S's and went 6 for 10 with wins in my placements, and all of that only ended me up in Iron III. I checked my MMR and noticed that it was 1700: much too high for Iron! Upon further research, I noticed that this MMR is high Gold / low Plat MMR.

Is there any reason that everybody who hasn't played ranked is automatically placed into Iron? I understand that it definitely helps prevent smurfs from overtaking the board, but it also makes the grind extremely difficult for players who just didn't feel up to ranked yet.

I personally think that there should be a time threshold for automatically placing players into Iron. For example, maybe having a minimum of 100 hours of games played on account to not be subject to the automatic Iron IV.

It's also just a bit demoralizing to see such a low rank when you've seen that you can compete with those higher tiers.

Any thoughts? Concerns? Disagreements?

5 Comments

Kalienor2 votes

I checked my MMR and noticed that it was 1700

You checked an estimated MMR calculated by some random site. You can't know your MMR. To give you a glimpse of their accuracy, I'm currently doing my placements with a Gold 4 account and my estimated MMR is around Iron 3.

I personally think that there should be a time threshold for automatically placing players into Iron. For example, maybe having a minimum of 100 hours of games played on account to not be subject to the automatic Iron IV.

I know people who were Bronze 5 after THOUSANDS of ranked games played. You just can't make a parallel between time spent and player's abilities.

It's also just a bit demoralizing to see such a low rank when you've seen that you can compete with those higher tiers.

That's because you're looking for early results when matchmaking actually requires a fair amount of data to evaluate you. Start getting worried if nothing has changed after 50 games, not before. The game has never been able to properly place you after only a dozen games; you can bet on about a hundred before getting high accuracy matchmaking and matching rank.

If you have a much higher level than your rank, you'll start playing with better players regardless of your division. If you do well with them, you'll earn much more LP and might even jump some divisions for a faster climb. The game doesn't like when your level doesn't match your rank, so it will do all it can to harmonize them as fast as possible.

TL;DR Just play. Your rank will be relevant eventually. But that's not even important. Let the game do his thing, your job is to play and that's it :) .

Phieldworker1 votes

I think any account that has not placed in rank previously will start in iron. But because your mmr is high you’ll gain a bunch of LP. Had a friend do the same in preseason and in two and a half weeks he went from iron 4 to S1.

LoseORDieTrying1 votes

Don't worry about it, you can be Iron RANK in plat-diamond ELO games now, so you'll still be able to play with and against players higher up very quickly. It only takes a few consecutive wins to get the new system to give you a chance in higher ELO matches. I hate that I get Iron, Bronze, and Silver players in Plat-Diamond ELO games, but it will work in your favor here.

xDelightifyx1 votes

You wont be auromatically ranked iron. This is a new. account and i was placed silver instant at the end of the last season. Still pretty low tbh.

KVbqbFsC8e1 votes

Silver players complained for years about having new players in their Ranked games so I don't think this is going to be changed back.

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