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What I've Learned While Playing Ranked So Far

Hey Im Brian·2/5/2019, 6:24:38 PM·7 votes·4,946 views

I'll start this discussion off by saying that this is going to be a lengthy post. So grab some popcorn and nestle in your favorite chair, Kasper The friendly League Ghost is going to tell you a story. For the most part, I like the IDEA of positional ranks but the current system is broken. I'm your pretty average player that hovers between gold/plat each season and I'd like to take you on a journey of how ranked has been going so far. I'll also be laying out the good and the bad of the current system.

So first off, the games are pretty one sided straight from the get go. I understand that everyone's ranks got reset and there's supposed to be some time to get everyone in their ranks to make things more fair but I'm still not seeing it. There will be games where my team will be 20-5 before 15 mins and the game is over. The other side of the coin holds true. Now you might be saying, "well thats going to happen regardless of the ranking system", and you're right, however, my point is that it's happening more often than it used to.

My second point ties in with the first point.

The Quality of games have gone down. Here's a normal champion select. I get my main role which is mid (currently plat 4). My top laner is a diamond player but plays mid as well. My jungler is unranked (does anyone main jungle anymore?). My ADC is Silver (somehow) and my support is plat. Top lane is a hit or miss at this point, jungler just farms for the first 10 mins to try and get level 6, and the support has flamed the adc for being the worse adc on the planet at least 5 times and says "gg ff @15". The skill gaps that are shown in a game are pretty noticeable. As a mid main, I can tell if my opponent is silver/gold based off their mechanics and game knowledge. The same holds true for the higher elo players. Being good at a champion or position is not what gets you elo, it's a factor for sure, but it's not THE factor. Knowing how to trade, cs, roam, push advantages, map awareness, lane priority, freezing, are all more important for climbing than champion mechanics. Thats why I think having high elo players playing in a game with low elo players is frustrating for both parties. Let me create a scenario for you. We are in a gold 3 game, everyone is gold 3 except the mid laner, he's Diamond 3 but he mains top and has never played mid before. (this scenario isn't fool proof i know and it won't happen this way every time, i'm just trying to illustrate game knowledge). Riot says this is fair because the diamond player is unranked in mid and hasn't played that position before. Mechanically, the diamond player can't solo kill the gold 3 mid laner, but he knows gank pressure, lane priority and csing so he builds a sizable gold advantage. Is first to roam, first to react, and gets other lanes ahead. Overall, the higher elo players game knowledge is better than his opponents. Thats why you hear silver players say, "i always win my lane but my botlane (or insert any other role) loses so bad I can't carry". It's because you're game knowledge isn't good enough to understand how to carry that game. Thats why i'm not Diamond, I'm just not good enough. But when you have a mix game of diamonds to silvers the overall experience is worse for everyone. Players just don't care when they get off roles and it affects everyone.

Promos.....EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I got into promos, the average games I had to play until I got my main was 4. In my promos for plat, I got top 4 times before I even played a promo game. Then I had to off role again a couple games to play my second promo game. Not only that, but did you know that if you get your off role when you're main is in promos you can just dodge and it won't count as a loss in your promo? The level of frustration that came with trying to finish promos was exhausting. I get that queue times are trying to be shortened but honestly, I would take longer queue times than having to play 4 games off role to get my main! I had to ask my mid laner if they wouldn't mind swapping just so I could finish my promos, and after that game I got a note from Riot saying that I "played a role that wasn't assigned to you, if this happens too often you could be penalized". Like What? Also, tying in to my second point from before, my top isn't plat, which means my teammates aren't either, which means the level of gameplay is lower, which means when I get into my promo game, I won't be as sharp which can affect my teammates game too. We shouldn't bounce from silver games to plat games to master games, it's ridiculous.

Climbing isn't fun. Albeit, I got to plat in the fewest games ever this season, it still took longer than it should by having to play other roles. Before, when you were "grinding" ranked there came some satisfaction with climbing and it felt like every game mattered. Now, there is only satisfaction when on your main role and the rest feel more like you're being held hostage. Personally, I'm not having fun but ranking up to plat on my main and then starting over with a different role. I don't want all my roles to be plat, I want to be diamond and I have to unnecessarily grind more roles in order to climb. I wouldn't mind playing off roles if I chose to play them instead of being forced. If by mid season I get diamond on my main role, I'd love to hop on another role and try it out. But I'm being forced to learn new roles while still trying to climb. It's like riot is trying to get rid of normals. If i wanted to learn a new role, i'd go play normals for a bit and try to learn instead of ruining ranked games for everyone else because i'm a terrible adc.

Duo's.........Riot needs to fix this problem ASAP. Lets say you're a gold player that mains top. You have another gold friend that mains jungle. You can queue up as jungle while they queue up as top. This will place both of you in a lower mmr game because you both are queued up for a role that isn't your main. You can then swap in champ select and viola, you have a free smurf game for both of you. And of course some will say, "but you get less LP for easier games", which is true but you get more LP on those easier games than from splashing on other roles.

Splashing. I can't really confirm this myself but I've heard from different people that you can be demoted from splashing. On the flipside, you can't get promos if you splash to 100lp. This needs to be fixed.

Overall, the concept of roles is fine. I think if this was implemented during preseason or exclusive to normals that Riot would get better feedback on how to improve it and properly implement into Ranked. But in it's current state, and of course this my personal opinion, Ranked is slowly dying.

Anyways, what are ya'lls thoughts?

2 Comments

AntiSJW2/5/2019, 7:00:15 PM4 votes

Very accurate assessment.

My only correction would be that the matchmaking and player integrity started dipping last season, hit a peak in pre-season 9 and never stopped. That's partially game changes but mainly the community has been mishandled badly. There's no transparency for punishment, trolling/throwing or taking actions to purposely piss off your allies (taking their gold while they're behind etc) is at an all time high, and nothing about IFS or Support tickets feel satisfying or impactful. Its a bad environment to grow power creep in. Its an even worse environment to rework a rank system in, because the morality of players trying to climb at this point is pretty non existent.

The fact people are out the gate trying to abuse the new system with no regards to other players is like the tip of the "no fucks iceberg". There's nothing about Riot's robot babysitting and copy paste employees that relates to the frustration of a normal gamer trying to play.

To play league you have to be a Zen Master who can never be offended or show their feelings. You must also be a perfect moral citizen while addressing other players even if they are refusing to play the game, calling you a %%%%asaurus, or both. Ah yes the feeling of shutting up and letting the house burn down That's league this season

Lastly- trolling and throwing and being petty is rampant because you don't have to talk. And if you don't talk, or don't say anything that alerts Robo Babysitter, you're pretty much given a clean pass. I think this game was destined to decline as soon as a player could be punished for being upset at a troll.

Fallsmyer2/6/2019, 10:44:34 AM1 votes

I agree with everything you said.

But I have also experienced that the new ranked system discouraged teamwork. In one game, I had a Garen toplane against Vayne and I was Lux mid against Zed. The Garen asked if I wanted to swap, but our ADC and jungle both said not to do it because it would mess with our LP. I didn't realize what that meant at the time because I haven't read a lot about the new ranked system, just been keeping up with champion/item changes. Later that day, I was in my promos and I went Malphite mid and with a Yasuo top, once we got into game, the Yasuo suggested we lane swap because Yasuo into Riven is a bad matchup and he would do much better against Taliyah. I agreed because I generally do well as Malphite against Riven. We proceeded to win pretty easily with a lot of great teamwork. Once I got to the Victory screen I was immediately disgruntled with my 59 LP for top lane... so much for winning my promos thanks to great teamwork and cooperation. Instead I had to play another game in which I got a first time Yorick top, Kayle jungle that did nothing but flame the entire team since champ select, and a one way asswhooping to a failed promo.