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What I learned about ranked and why its dumb

World Eaters·9/4/2014, 11:31:35 AM·1 votes·857 views

I have only really tried ranked seriously this season and I am about to get gold and the past two months have shown me something I had not heard from the community. first a little short back story. I was shown league of legend half way through season 2 buy a few friends who had learned about it from friends so on so forth and I started to play and saw how amazing my friends were back then they were platinum all of them and now they are all diamond and are trying to get into master now that its been announced. so I have always compared myself to these guys and they are the real reason I haven't really played ranked until now because I had a goal in the skill levels of my friends. now I can give a diamond player a hard time not beat them mind you but my face wasn't used to clean my own nexus you know and I was excited cause I deemed myself finally ready to try ranked.

Which brings us to the lesson I learned elo hell is elo hell because people at that rank treat it like its just normal games. I only started playing ranked when I could hold my own 70% of the time against almost ANYONE I played against. I waited until I knew I could get higher than silver maybe even gold in my own head. but now I know that people at low ranks are not really trying they are treating ranked games as the proving grounds for their skill when thats why normals exist in my mind. in elo hell its not because they are unskilled half the time its that they don't even care if they win or lose. when I play ranked its with almost a certain ceremony to it cause I want to win I want to progress in the game but I have people just kinda leaving to go eat a pizza or fap or whatever when I put aside an hour and a half to play a ranked game.

So now I know that I really should have never held ranked games to any sort of standard at all at my current rank cause its still just normal games just this time you are betting each game rather than playing each game.

I find this stupid and it makes me mad I cared as much as I did. Now all I want is out of silver and then see if gold changes things at all

4 Comments

Tyverus9/4/2014, 12:18:30 PM2 votes

I know them feels. The good news is this season it i lessened a little bit. The higher you get the less that happens. by about silver 2 it gets noticeably less. Previously though this was a problem at every rank (season 3 i think) where once you achieved getting to gold5 from silver1 you couldnt fall below it and you may as well have played bronze again since people knew they couldnt lose their status and would give up in less than 5mins. With the change it doesnt happen as much and people do care more often than people dont.

Part of the issue from reading your post is you set such lofty goals for your first time seriously playing ranked and, having hit a bit of a tough spot, you feel cheated. What i recommend is try to remember good games more. Yes every bad game sticks out like a sore thumb, scars you for life, and so on. but there are good games too and if you remember atleast one good thing you or someone on your team did each game then the bad ones wont seem so bad like "stole baron" or "corki got an awesome triple kill". I found the same issue with myself in ranked where it seemed every other game we'd have an afk, or dc, or feeders but there are two counters to this. this first i said before: remember the good games. In poker this happens alot where someone gets beat by a hand that loses 90% of the time but losing against it that one time brands the memory in their head and it'll seem like it happens all the time.

The second is try to list things YOU could have done better each game. there'll always be that little scapegoat you can go to like "the jungler didnt gank" or "botlane fed to the high heavens" or "red buff smelled funny" but here's the catch: DONT USE ANY OF THESE, if you can find one thing you could do better and need to improve like "need to ward better" or "my mechanics were off during an engage", then you've given yourself a direction of improvement and already made a worthy contribution to all your future games that your teammates will be happy for having you on their team.

Finally if you do have a bad game, take a break. sounds simple and it is, i myself watch the pros some or on youtube i know gbay99 has a lot of information in his videos on ways to improve both mentally and mechanically when it comes to ranked play so i recommend checking him out. even his older videos dont use a ton of patch by patch information and so are relevant any day of the week.

I'll leave you with one last comment: If you think you deserve gold, prove it such that everyone else thinks you deserve gold too.

Tulare9/4/2014, 12:35:10 PM1 votes

I am one of those who, as you aptly describe it, is "treating ranked games as the proving ground for [my] skill" and I'd like to make a counterpoint. I think you've taken many different classes of players and lumped them together. I think that each of these is distinct:

  • Players who treat ranked games like it's just normal games
  • Players who treat ranked games as the proving grounds for their skill
  • Players who don't even care if they win or lose

Indeed, I treat ranked games more seriously. I pursue victory doggedly. I don't experiment with new champions or untested builds. If I want to play ranked at all this season, however, then it must fill the "proving grounds" niche. I don't have much time to make a dedicated pursuit of ranked. However more seriously I might choose to take ranked LoL, the fact remains that LoL is just one of several hobbies. There is a cap on how seriously I will take it and your disappointment that I am not as devoted a player as you are in no way disqualifies me from playing the game and pursuing a rank.

MrSc0tty9/4/2014, 3:40:04 PM1 votes

It's weird every time I see one of these posts complaining about ranked trolls I check match history and see that they're not focusing on champs they know how to play and have several games where they're straight up feeding with deaths twice to three times more than kills or even assists.

You can't force other people to play better but you can improve yourself.