Riot. Lets talk about the Division 5 safety net improvements. Bring back competitive integrity.

An itchy scrotum··12 votes·1,613 views

Currently, the way the ranked system works is once you hit a new tier, it is physically impossible for you to demote a tier unless your MMR is significantly lower than your rank. For example, you'd have to have Silver 1 MMR to demote from Plat 5 to Gold. While this safety net is great for people that don't want to stress about being demoted, it is also counter intuitive. Competition is the main purpose of the ladder. I'm sure many people have seen this scenario, but this safety net encourages pretty strange behaviour where someone in division 5 will just spend a season experimenting with a different role/champion while having 0 risk of demoting because it's physically impossible to be demoted a tier. Ranked isn't competitive if people are able to do that. It's also common you'll see many people in the upper tier of ranks trying to climb while someone that is sitting in Division 5 with 0 LP isn't playing seriously because they know they'll never demote.

Instead of completely reverting back to the old elo system, I think a better way to encourage people to stay competitive once they hit division 5 is to make it so people can be demoted if their MMR is 2 divisions below their rank. I personally think this would still be too easy, but someone who goes on a long losing streak usually gets demoted. This should also apply to someone in division 5 if their MMR is a bit too low.

6 Comments

The Headbutter5 votes

Competition is gone this season. When the worst player on your team matters so much more than the best person on your team, game is completely fucked. Please get rid of this 3 year long tank meta (which Riot, you keep buffing by the way with boneplating, aftershock, and everything else) and bring back a way for us carries (besides adc) to carry.

Hügö5 votes

And while you are at it remove promos thanks.

Chikapi4 votes

You probably haven't met someone who got demoted a tier then...While I personally haven't done so (and I admit it's hard to drop a tier), you don't need to be at silver MMR to go from Plat to Gold.

The official message is the same as you mentioned: you need to be a whole tier down to get demoted. However, that was said a few years ago, and the reddit community have long debunked that (you can google it). In reality, if you're around Plat III MMR, you'll risk getting back to Plat I from Diamond V at any time. I have several friends who did just that.

Whether that's still too much shielding, is of course subject to debate. Simply getting rid of the shield, would cause many players to only play one game every month to avoid decay once they reach plat/diamond, and many gold players would cease playing altogether to keep their ranks. That is what Riot is afraid of happening. They want you to keep playing.

Now I'm not defending the behaviour of "one game a month to keep your rank". I'm saying if you get rid of the shield (or make it too thin), it will happen, and it's probably worse than the current system.

Tundra Hunter2 votes

From my experience, MMR is very plastic. I have been platinum since season 4 (demoted to gold 1 last year for unactivity). During my placements games this year, I did quite bad as I didn't play in months. My MMR (seen on op.gg) went from platinum to silver in 10 games. (3 wins 7 loss). During my time in platinum, my MMR ranged from low Diamond to high Silver (!!), while I was in platinum. This plasticity, to me, is quite annoying because with all the experience I had, I feel I belong in platinum MMR, yet most of the time I play above or below my MMR. To me, MMR should be more robust.

Yordle Xayah2 votes

I have the MMR of a grape

Modl Ryden l1 votes

Yeah I've seen enough cases where the division safety net gets abused.

I've had cases where a support who recently get platinum 5 (this was after the match I went to find out) that they 1) didn't but the gold income item 2) didn't place wards 3) would kill steal to make the adc look negative. Which is stupid since I'm sure the report system won't penalize this player since their scores were positive. The role they played into doesn't have any weight to it.

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