A couple reasons I feel why Riot has routinely ignored its majority player base
Hey all,
I am a Gold ELO Support and Jungle main. I recently was dismayed reading about the forthcoming update to the ban system in draft, flex, and solo q.
More specifically:
As we announced earlier, the 10 bans regular play format is different from the pro scene. We’ve made some changes to how the system works detailed below.
And:
So, why aren’t we implementing the esports format in solo or flex? It pretty much comes down to the needs of a team of organized players being very different from individual players placed on a matchmade team. In organized play, having some knowledge of your opponents’ strategy means you can pivot your pick and ban phases to specifically target weaker players or home in on a small champion pool.
Whether or not it's a good idea for game play to have a ban phase based around prior knowledge of your opponents, isn't something I am taking issue with. Just find it slightly alarming how game development seems so deliberately catered to a small percentage of the player base.
For example, the Pros already play a patch behind the general player base. For the average player (plat 5 elo is actually the top 7th percentile of players), I feel this has a tendency to create ranked game ban phases where people think the strongest champs and strategies of the current patch are actually the champs and strategies of the previous patch since people have been watching pro play. Add to this now that pros are playing on an esoteric client that uses a different ban system that was developed first, and specifically for these players.
So why didn't Riot roll out the new ban system to us first and then tweak it with the "snake system" as they are calling it afterwards for the pros? It seems like bringing this system to us was simply an after thought. Notice how the potential problem of allowing duplicate bans is something that could never effect pro play.
The ranked system, in general, already ignores the majority of the player base. For instance there are 7 possible ranks (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Master, Challenger) that with the exception of the highest 2 each have sub divisions (i.e. Bronze 1 to 5, etc.). Yet 75% of players are in the bottom 2 ranks (Bronze and Silver) while the remaining 25% of players reside in the upper 5 (Gold, Plat, Diamond, Master, Challenger).
I've been Gold for a couple seasons, so it's not something that really effects me all that much but it is something I think about. I guess it just feels like Riot doesn't care about its players. For example, the way the system is set up seems to promote toxicity which is probably one of the biggest problems with this game and is the subject of many viral videos such as Disco Heat's "League of Children" series, or the potentially disturbing popularity of toxic streamers like Tyler1 and Grossgore. What I mean is that a new player can easily achieve Silver 4 or Silver 5 just by winning 4 placement games on a fresh unranked account. Even if that player will eventually fall down to bronze, it does little to change the fact that a lot of bronze players are significantly better at the game than those in low silver; this promotes a lot of toxicity when people tilt rage on new players.
I assume there will be some feedback to this post by players who think I am crying about Riot because I am sad about being a Gold scrub, but I really don't think that's the case here but y'all arel free to suggest otherwise. xD
Anyhow, would be interesting to see what other people think about specialized treatment for pro play regarding patches, and about 75% of ranked players belonging to the lowest 2 divisions of 7.
Cheers,
RichGirlOnLSD
