Fixing Match Making is a Must!

This subject has been beaten to death, a lot by me. But I am really passionate about playing evenly matched games. Lets just forget ranks and mmr for a second. To me an even match is where your team has an equal chance of winning the game 15-20 minutes into the game. Things can change after that (baron throws) but I generally feel like a game is competitive when I feel my team has an even chance 15-20 minutes into the game at winning. What I really dislike is stomps where the game is game is basically decided by 15 mins and the only way one team has a chance of winning is by a HUGE throw by the enemy. Now obviously there will be stomps time to time, so I know there is no way to make this perfect. But I think Riot should try to make games as even as possible as often as possible.

Now you can argue they do... and hell maybe they have done all they can. But they have used the same system for years and it just.... doesn't seem to be all that great. The only "magical" elo I have found where games more often than not seem to be even is mid gold. Rank ranges generally are like p4-silver 1 in games. It just seems more often than not teams have an equal chance of winning throughout the game. Not every game, but at a high frequency. Maybe the reason I feel this way is because I am a macro player and it seems like this is the range other players start finding a macro sense. I have never been a higher elo, I just hear certain levels of plat or diamond can get pretty "uneven". I am sure there are a few reasons for this such as smurfs, boosted players, first timing champs, changing roles, AUTO FILL - starting to be used more since smaller player population.

Although I am not sure what they can do about higher elos I do think they could make some changes to fix match making in lower elos.

**Potential Changes: **

1.Lower new account starting mmr. Doesn't mean rank cap being gold 1 still can't be there, but start new accounts in lower mmr games and quickly work mmr up if they win first 3-4 games instead of starting at like silver 3 mmr and then slowly dropping if they lose.

2. Softer rank resets throughout the season. If someone is stuck in bronze/silver/gold w/e their going to be there until they improve. So fully resetting these players ranks don't really make sense. It ruins ranks skill consistences and throws a lot of players off of playing ranked. I feel for bronze players who might work their way up to silver 5 or bronze 1 at the end of one season, then go like 9-1, 10-0 in placements only to be placed B5 at the start of as season. Same for people like me who rank to mid gold 1 season then start bronze the next. I will explain below why this is really bad for match making.

3. Better placement system. This covers the problems of #1 & 2 but adds in a 3rd. STOP the way you do placements where starting mmr changes throughout the season based on when you do your placements. There is no reason one person should have to climb 8 divisions while another needs to climb 2 to get back to prior season rank just because they wait a few months to do placements. Hence.... just stop such large rank resets and variance (at least for low elo) at the start of each season. All it does is lead to unmotivated, tilted players and inconsistent game matches.

Why Is This Important? To me... ranking up means you consistently beat players in a certain skill range. Which... this system does.. but games and skill ranges change so often that it's hard to really grasp this concept until you play many many many ranked games. You can go from one game having people who have a basic understand of the game, to the next being played with AN ENTIRELY new player or players. It throws you off, it throws the enemy off, it throws the new player off. It just ultimately doesn't make games that much fun to play. YES at the end of the day low elo is low elo. But there is a huge difference when you take 10 players who play consistently at say a gold 5 level and compare it to a game where 10 players consistently play at a silver 3 level. Now... you take this and match these players all to different games and you just get a lot of boring frustrating games.

Plus it's really hard to improve when you play vs a different skill level player in your role most games. Gold/silver/bronze literally is 90% of the player population at the end of the season. Saying the avg skill difference in these players is not that much is ridiculous.

Worst part is the system has been like this forever. Then Riot implements an entirely new queue "Flex Queue" this season creating 2 ranked queues instead of one. But instead of fixing past problems, they implement the same system but made it even worse. So now games are even more uneven, AND all the old problems still exist. Look..... I am no where close to pro or good at this game. But what I would expect from a ranked system is this. I would expect to play people consistently around my skill level and have my "rank" reflect that. If I was a lower rank then I should be I would rank up fairly quickly. If I was higher than I should be I would rank down quickly. Now.... I guess this does happen in this system... it just takes a LONG time and causes MANY boring/frustrating games to get there.

The cool part for me is in this system I know my current and consistent skill level is around 20-25% of the player population or gold 3-5 (depending on time of season). I know I have at least played consistently in this skill range for 2 seasons. How do I know this? Well besides reaching gold 4 in preason 6 I ranked 3 accounts to gold 3-4 solo last season. Keep in mind that was dynamic queue or "Flex" queue now. Of course with new season and soft resets I knew I still played at this level. Sadly I needed to play 160ish ranked games to even get back to gold and I am still technically not at my actual "true" rank (although very close). Soo.. I basically am back to my actual rank but in the current system it took a good chunk of time and I had to play many uneven low fun games.

But now I am back to the same bullshit in their new "flew" queue system. Now remember how I ranked 3 accounts to gold solo in the same system last year? Well it seems to make pretty common sense that I could do the same thing this season. And to be fair I have no doubt that I can. The problem is..... I have no desire to because of how garbage the games are. In a GOOD system I would argue 1. I shouldn't even have to start almost 2 full tiers lower than my actual skill level (i.e. bronze). But looking past that 2. I should be able to fairly easily rank up to my ACTUAL rank. Needless to say.... not the case. Games have been dogshit... my win rate is dogshit. Nothing different except I play higher rank people then I did most the time in solo queue ranking up with getting some of the worst teammates I have ever seen. Now people are right when they say "you can only focus on yourself to rank up". This is no doubt true but...... it has it limits. Sorry but.... I am smart enough to know that if I play consistently at a gold level in norms/ ranked solo/duo, and Dynamic queue (flex) last season, then I surely play at a gold level in flex current season. So when I lose most of my games I am not going to say I don't contribute to the losses... but surely there is more going on than me just all of a sudden being beyond garbage rank at the game.

So please Riot..... fix your match making system. I know it will never be perfect but.... I know you can make it better than it currently is. Keep killing those memes and lets add poor match making to the killed memes list.