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About the elo system and why tiers do matter

BluePolarizer··4 votes·544 views

I've frequently encountered low elos (bronze/silver/golds) believe that they are equal to diamonds, that diamonds only get there by luck or getting carried. Putting aside the preseason and next season (where indeed, you can get diamond from getting carried by a 5 stack) here are some logical fallacies that low elos commit that make them think they're just as good as diamonds when they are not.

  1. "Oh but they only have a 2.8:1 KDA".

Why it is wrong: They have a 2.8:1 KDA against other diamonds. They don't have a 2.8:1 KDA against silvers.

Let's look at a random challenger player: http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=Yami

I am in no way affiliated with Yami. I just looked up the challenger leaderboard and picked a random guy.

His KDA on Irelia is 1.93:1. His KDA on Lee Sin is almost just as mediocre.

Does this mean that Yami is worse than some random guys with higher KDAs? No way. Because Yami has a 1.93:1 KDA against pros and challengers. We're not just not in the same ballpark, we aren't even playing the same game.

  1. "Oh but they only have a 53% win rate, I'm almost as good as him".

Why it is wrong: He didn't have a 53% win rate when he was in bronze/silver/gold/plat or even diamond. What likely happened was that he got to D1 with a 60-70% win rate then as he grinded through masters and challenger, he fought against people equal to his skill and lost more.

  1. "Oh but they are one trick ponies"

Why it is wrong: If it was that easy climbing as a 1 trick pony, you'd be diamond too. But you're not, so it's obviously not that easy. In fact, I believe the majority of challengers are NOT 1 trick ponies. Yami in particular has almost equal number of games played across all his champs.

6 Comments

Arcane Azmadi1 votes

The division system IS fundamentally flawed, though. What the hell does 'Bronze' even mean? Go play a game in bronze and you'll see people who have perfectly good game mechanics, general knowledge and judgement skills being put on teams with players so bad they literally shouldn't be allowed to play in ranked. The difference in skill between players in higher ranks is really down to a matter of degrees, while Bronze is such a massive all-encompassing valley of skill levels (because you can't fall lower than Bronze V) that calling someone "Bronze" is literally almost meaningless.

The problem is that you aren't promoted or demoted based on your performance. You're promoted or demoted based on one thing and one thing only- whether you win or lose games. Your performance affects whether you win or lose, of course. But it's not the only deciding factor because you're only one player on a team of five. Even the average skill of your team isn't the ultimate determiner of victory or defeat; every time a team loses a game because one of their players disconnected and never came back, or decided to be a dick and start intentionally feeding to make their team lose, the entire ranking system becomes completely invalid.

BluePolarizer1 votes

I spectate alot of silver and gold games since my friends are in those divisions. I also spectate my diamond friends.

The difference is night and day. It is literally like they are not playing the same game.

From your argument, may I deduce the following:

since rank is completely invalid and bronzes also can have amazing mechanics, general knowledge and judgment, you are just as good as Yami is. You are a challenger pro and superior to me, in fact. After all, rank doesn't matter.

Arcane Azmadi1 votes

Don't put words in my mouth, bud. I'm currently in Bronze III where I was stuck for pretty much all of season 5. I don't BELONG there (I fought my way out of bronze EASILY in season 4 and spent the entire season comfortably in silver) and I can tell you exactly why I was stuck there in season 5 despite having already proven myself to be silver-caliber: because MMR was completely borked so I was losing more LP for a loss than I was gaining for a win (ironically, as soon as the season ended, Riot fixed this so now I'm steadily climbing again). And I'm pretty good at LoL. I'm not a challenger pro and almost certainly not superior to you, but I'm not bad. I've been playing for over 5 years, I know the game quite well. I know how to pick for a team comp, I understand the importance of vision, of having a flexible build, of knowing when to take objectives, how to last hit, how to freeze a lane, how to stutter-step while kiting and other details required to play, even if I don't have absolute mastery of every last vagary of the game. I can play in every role and play multiple champions in each one, although I prefer team-centric supporty ones over carries because that's just how I roll. I have at least a working understanding of the abilities of every single champion in the entire game, even ones I've never played, so I know what my opponents are capable of.

And yet I find myself in games with players who can go the entire game without buying a ward, or even using their free trinket more than once or twice. Players who insist on playing only a single lane because "that's all I can do" and call "gg" when their main is banned. ADCs who autoattack straight up the lane, pushing needlessly, missing last hits, opening themselves up to jungle ganks and missing opportunities to harass or trade favourably. ADCs who, when I say "Get a QSS because Morde is ulting you and turning you against us/Zed is deleting you instantly with his ult", respond with "what's QSS?" (and then when I explain it, refuse to build it and continue getting turned into ghosts/instantly deleted by Zed). Tops who take Ignite instead of Teleport because working with the team is an alien concept to them, and then proceed to lose lane anyway to an opponent who DID take Teleport and can then teleport down to screw our bot lane over, or pose a massive split push threat late game.

You say the difference between silver/gold and diamond is like night and day. I'm not saying you're wrong, but you ARE completely missing the point; namely that the difference in skill levels within bronze alone is ALSO like night and day. I'm not sure what exact proportion of the LoL community is actually stuck within Bronze (my friend told me he thought it was about 40%, with another 40% being in silver, but those numbers sound a bit odd) but it's WAY too large for people to simply dismiss the entire division with "everyone in Bronze is noob garbage".

Also, I didn't say "rank doesn't matter" (words in my mouth again). I'm just pointing out the indisputable fact that a system where progression is tied entirely to victory or defeat is undermined as soon as it becomes possible to lose in an invalid manner. There is only ONE way to lose a game that should be considered "valid": the enemy team was better than you. Don't even ASK me how many time I've been in games where the better team lost because it was a 4v5 (both my team AND the opposing team- yes, I've won games unfairly due to afks/trolls too).

BluePolarizer1 votes

I've lost multiple games yesterday to veggies teammates and AFKs in an attempt to get out of plat 2 yet again. I was plat 1 50 LP back in June and ended the same LP at the end of the season. Trust me, I know how it feels. I've tilted back down from almost being diamond to being plat 5 0 LP playing with golds multiple times. I was this exact rank 4 months ago.

Tops who take ignite and lose lane, refusal to buy QSS, etc. still exist in plat. However, there is a key difference:

In plat above plat 5, at least half the time they will admit their mistake and try to stop the bleeding.

Espy Psyche1 votes

There's a really simple fix to this -- ELO inflation involving AFK players.

Instead of allowing teammates to gain different amounts of LP from a game, create an algorithm which determines who is favored in a game (highest average league level maybe) to define the amount of LP the game is worth. The baseline might be +/- 20 LP, with a factor based on the skill difference between the teams. That way it's more like chess, which is where the ELO system came from.

That way, the game is worth +/- X LP if the favorite wins, and +/- Y LP if the underdog wins, where Y is greater than X. (If the favorite wins, the favorite gains X LP and the underdog loses X LP, if the underdog wins, the underdog gains Y LP and the favorite loses Y LP). Since we have teams of 5, the total worth of the game is 5X or 5Y (of course it's zero-sum because there's a +5X to one side and a -5X to the other).

The ELO inflation occurs when there's an AFK. Let's change the names to Blue (favorite) and Purple (underdog). Let's say Blue has an AFK.

If Purple wins, the Purple team has to gain 5Y and the Blue team has to lose 5Y in total. But Blue had an AFK. So we don't just give and take LP as we normally would.

Purple gains LP as they should -- each player gains Y LP for a total of 5Y.

Blue team, however, had an AFK, so we divert all LP loss to the AFK. The AFK loses 5Y LP (and if 5Y is greater than their total amount of LP in their division, they fall a division, and this transcends the "you can't fall below S5/G5" barrier) and the four other teammates lose 0 LP.

If Blue team wins (the side with the AFK), the Purple team has to lose 5X (the game's worth X now because the favorite won) and the Blue team gains 5X.

Again, Purple loses LP as they normally would because they didn't have an AFK. Each player loses X LP for a total of 5X.

Blue has an AFK. So the AFK player's LP gains are divided among their teammates. Each present Blue player gains (5X/4) LP (which is greater than X). The AFK player gains 0 LP.

If there's more than one AFK, the lost LP is split among all AFK players. If you win a game with more than one AFK, the LP gain of all the AFK players is split among the present players.

Basically in this system:

-- Players who lose because they're saddled with an AFK don't lose LP, so they can keep climbing. -- Players who play AGAINST AFKs are unaffected. -- Players who ARE THE AFK plummet to the bottom of the ladder very quickly, because the AFK will likely drop a league every time they AFK -- Players who persevere and win while down a player are awarded more LP than normal for their heroic efforts

It'll push all the AFKs to Bronze 5 and push the players who didn't AFK upwards into Silver and Gold.

Arcane Azmadi1 votes

There's an even simpler solution: teams who have to play a man down for a considerable part (or even only those who have to 4v5 for ALL) of a game don't lose LP for it, while the afk/DC loses double.

It's been suggested a thousand times. Arguments that "it'll be abused" have been disproven, or proven to be the lesser of two evils, over and over again. It's simple, it'd take no effort, it'd make tens of thousands of players much, MUCH happier.

And yet it won't happen. Ever. Because no matter what they say, Riot don't give a fuck about afks/ragequitters/DCs ruining games. It's not THEIR fault (it's the fault of the player who does it, or at the very least their ISP, not anything they're doing), so it's not their problem. They don't care how many games are ruined.

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