Dear Riot, Your Low-Elo Rank System Sucks. So Here is an Idea!

Contusion··14 votes·2,594 views

Dear Riot.

I believe your whole staff who work to make this game really don't want to improve the ranked system so lower elo's are not so stupid to get out of for players receiving S ranks after a loss. Bronze And Silver players cannot carry a team with an AFK 1/5 games and cant change how OTHER players react and play the game so the team doesn't lose the game. Its a team game but you designed it to be utterly impossible to rank in lower elos with Children who would be better off playing Viva Pinata on an Xbox, instead of feeding lanes, Not listening to team mates and pings, going afk and tilting or flaming and blaming the team for them doing so bad. We are only in control of our champions. We are only in control of how we manage our play styles in game with a team But when a team has 2 people being 1 trick pony's and getting caught out. When a team has players who tilt and force feed or play like they can win a 1v1 when they have fed there laner 5 kills already in the first 10 minutes of game (Literally just happened), Your whole staff expects the team to win 4v5's against a fed team. Those players who receive S ranks on games they LOSE should NOT lose 17-19 LP when THEY did the best they could for the team and tried to help carry the team to a Victory. You simply cannot expect lower elos to be able to carry a team of 5 with 1 or 2 people not actually doing anything for the team. Very good chance you will lose the game simply because of the numbers advantage in team fights. A Loss is a loss and losing LP should still be a thing however when you get several games in a row with these issues you simply have NO control over any of it, it really puts a dent on the progress people make trying to get out of bronze and silver. Players should not be punished as harshly in lower elos for how the rest of their team plays in games. A loss of 10-12 LP when you receive an S rank will still slow progress, however instead of losing 1 or more games in a row to these problems and dropping down nearly 20LP for each game and potentially dropping rank for other peoples mistakes isn't fair for those playing like they shouldn't even be in that rank. It makes our ability to climb near impossible.

Now statistically whatever problems i get in game on my team can also be a problem for the enemy team as well. Which is why it is the way it is. However even I feel a hard fought game against an enemy who lost shouldn't lose an entire game for his teams problems if they received an S rank and played their heart out in game. This method makes it for those who play and consistently receive S ranks (Not S-) in lost games wont feel like the hard work they have put into getting out of this Elo-Hell went to waste because of 1 or 2 people who don't listen to their teammates or group up for team fights. Later ranks such as Gold and Higher i believe should REMAIN as is. At this Elo and later ones, players should have a general grasp on the mechanics of game play. If you are in gold and not helping your team or cooperating with your team then you will probably lose and drop down to where you belong. Silver and Bronze. Players who lose and did not receive an S rank or S+ rank should lose the average 17LP as original simply cause they did not receive those ranks for something they lack in game such as, under farming , Less Deaths by playing more passive, More Kills by properly knowing when to engage, More Assists to improve how much of a team player you should be.

I wouldn't see this working 100% right now as the S Rank System seems to favor High amount of kills over everything else. If the S rank system got some adjustments to what the average stats are for that champion in that lane are in the Elo ABOVE you.

Example: You play Ashe ADC in Bronze. You lose game but you ended up with Farm, Kills, Deaths, And Assists averaging Silver Ashe Players which would give you an S and only a loss of about 11 or 12 LP. Playing ABOVE these averages should be when S+ comes in. It informs the players of how they rank up against others in higher elos playing the same champion as you which can give you a confidence boost even though you lost still. It can reassure the player that you are capable of leaving this Elo and belong in the next even though currently you are where you ranked.

This style of rank shows players how much Progress they made. Gives Confidence to the player. It doesn't require A miracle so you don't get 1 or 2 people on the team who decide to feed, afk, be a 1 trick pony or flame and tilt the team. You can actually expect these kinds of people and still feel comfortable in your ability to play the game and maybe receive an S at the end of game and not lose a large amount of LP, even if that person or 2 lost it for the team. It won't leave you feeling frustrated that your hard work means nothing at the end of the game cause you're still gonna lose 17-19 LP. This can actually reward those who deserve it still and not leave them left out to dry by other players decisions at the end of the game.

I can't say this idea is flawless and perfect as I, myself have not been able to fully think every aspect of it through, so I do expect peoples comments to find flaws in my idea. Finding a flaw is great and easy. Coming up with an idea to work the flaw out takes a lot more brain power so if you simply comment about a flaw and don't present an idea to fixing said flaw then I probably won't take what you pointed out seriously as you obviously are too lazy to work with an idea and you obviously would much rather work against it.

10 Comments

Very Hard Engage8 votes

S rank is meaningless because you're only compared to your peers and people around your elo, not someone whos actually good.

the only suitable way to rank people is with a bell curve instead of a log curve.

except riot will never make that happen because anyone under 50% thinks they're bad and riot wants to give people only rewarding good happy feelings.

the LP system also has gutted climbing/falling, you could leave silver in just a handful of games, now you cant, you're forced to play at least 9 with skipping divisions, realistically its closer to 25~40 games which is dumb, if you play with plats you should be in plat, but thats not what the LP system gives us.

God Went MIA5 votes

A system that is based only on Win and Loss is terrible with a small sample size. The odds of 40/60 that you will have a feeder, worse teammates, trolls, and we all know that flipping a quarter 100 times could easily give you 30 heads and 70 tails. That means unlucky players could just get absolutely screwed in the ranked system we have now, especially compared to lucky players who got good teammates 70 out of 100 games.

Besides the luck of teammates, there is NO REASON a 10/3 top laner should lose the same LP as their 0/10 adc. There's just no excuse besides laziness for a system that does that.

no mechanics ape3 votes

I used to hate the ranked system, but honestly, I don't think it's as bad as folks often make it out to be. A lot of the anger and frustration about the system doesn't make much sense.

I used to be Bronze 5 and hated the ranked system. I can remember once being quite angry after a particularly bad game, and I wondered why matchmaking and the ranked system were keeping me down.

The problem was that at the time, I didn't understand that I in no way deserved to climb with the way I was playing. I may have been getting kills and loads of cs, but I WASN'T PLAYING TO WIN and that's where the missed connection was.

I now believe Riot's system is fair. If you put in the time and effort to improve, climbing isn't particularly difficult. It takes time, sure, but demanding instant gratification is foolish.

People that truly play above their elo will climb whereas those closer to or below average will either plateau or drop.

We all get frustrating games, but you just have to let the law of large numbers work its magic. Playing enough games while making a conscious effort to improve your own play is how you'll see rewards and learn to appreciate the system.

JQKAndrei2 votes

The simple fact that smurfs can climb out of these elos easily is the proof that elo hell doesn't exist.

The information you need to get out of bronze/silver, is all on the internet, and it's not even that much, it's really only the fundamentals.

Dukues1 votes

Can't believe this has up votes. Shocking really.

Instead of crying about your meaningless S you could focus on improving and winning the next game. The system not perfect but it works the way it currently is.

Its so unnecessary. If your good enough you will rank up. If you are where you belong you stay between divisions. If you ranked higher than you should be you drop. Its not rocket science.

The mastery ranking system is already flawed. And who cares if you get an S when you on the losing team? Yeah... sometimes someone does really well and still losses. It sucks, but it happens. If they really "that good" and can play like that consistently in their current elo then their going to rank up. If it was a fluke then why waste time calculating and giving them a little less lp?

Its just an unnecessary waste of time in Riot's eyes. I tend to agree.

What the hell elo are we even talking about? You act like their is afk/trolls every game. Bronze = free wins. Other elos just have to suck it up as it is being way over exaggerated.

F3ltzer1 votes

To be fair, if you're not getting out of bronze/silver after more than one season, you're most likely going to stay there forever. It should take you at the very least a season to climb out of bronze/silver and that's if you're not the greatest at the game. Bronze/silver is literally the easiest elo to 1 v 5 a team no matter how hard your team fed.

Rank S doesn't mean anything I have games where I played like shit and still got S rank. For example yesterday I had a game where my lee jungle was 28-5-19 and I was malphite top with a score of 5-2-24 and got S+ while our lee got S- so yeah.

KillerVaca1 votes

Let's say somebody in your team is getting destroyed. You could be winning lane, maybe even crushing.

The question is not, "why is this guy feeding?" You should look to see how you can push your advantage to help your team win. Let it be split push, dying while getting a good inituation. Rotating or tping to help a matchup, etc.

I'm in elo hell as well, btw. I think I'm where i belong though.

Randomonium1 votes

Maybe eventually they could do this but right now the mastery system is in no way accurate or representative of a person's skill.

It sucks when you get feeders, ragers and trolls but over hundreds of ranked games the number of times you get them on your team and the number of times you get them on the enemy team evens out. If you consistently play better than your elo you will climb. It does take hundreds of games to reach the elo where you belong but you will get there if you put in the effort. If you can't climb after a couple hundred games then chances are you are in the elo where you belong.

I've tracked my stats for over 2,000 games and I can honestly say the system is pretty damn fair. Only about 20% of games are actually unwinnable and about 20% of games you're pretty much guaranteed to win. Another 20% of games require you to play much better than your elo and conversely 20% of your games you can play worse than your elo and still win. This results in most players winning 40% of their games and losing 40% of their games (unless they are way better or way worse than their elo.) The final 20% is the difference between climbing and getting demoted. These are the games that are incredibly close where a single mistake can decide whether you win or lose. If you perform better than your peers in these games then you will climb.

The reason why a lot of people can't climb is they get so fixated on games where the deck is stacked against them and they go on tilt when they lose these games. They carry this tilt into subsequent games and wind up playing poorly, causing them to lose games that they otherwise would have been able to win.

Accept that you're going to lose a decent percentage of your games. Don't let it tilt you and cause you to lose games that you could have won. Accept that it's going to take hundreds and hundreds of games to climb. The ranked ladder is a marathon not a sprint. You're not going to reach diamond/master/challenger overnight.

Wadud921 votes

I just do not like the fact that at Silver 3 I'll be matched with Gold players, every once in a while a plat player will turn up. With me or against me this makes no sence, why am I playing with people that Riot says are better then me why are they playing with me when riot says I'm worse then them. Its fair to no one.

In high elo it works exceptionally well, but most of Leagues playerbase is in Silver

Bearcules1 votes

Whoever says that elo hell does not exist is someone who has already been out of it and probably has great teammates to play directly with in duos or flex. I recently won 7 games in a row to make it to silver 3 and then lost 4 and got demoted right back. And every one of those losses was cause by a teammate who did not want to cooperate in some way or another (including afk's). That seem fair to anyone?

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