How Riot has lied to and deceived us around ranked matchmaking

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but either in LCS or in pre-season/6.1 patch notes (I've skimmed through patch notes and haven't found any mention of it so it may have been during LCS), Riot mentioned how, starting in season 6, one of the main focuses in games (specifically ranked) is to make sure that there are a higher percentage of games that have a more even match-up. The point they stressed was making sure that each game could be decided by which team had better team coordination - or played better as a team and came together as a team to win - and that less games were 20 or <20 minute stomps for one team. The other point Riot has been dead-set on (especially in the LCS) is lowering the average game time, so that games were ending quicker (~30 minutes) instead of taking a long time (~50-60 minutes). Both of these ideas are, obviously enough, great, and, if done correctly, would lead to a much more healthy overall game environment where players don't have to worry about whether something is going to come up in an hour, and instead only worry about the next 30-35 minutes, and even if your team performs poorly in lane phase, you still have a chance to come back mid-late game if your teamwork and coordination is better than the enemies.

So far, I've seen exactly the opposite.

Of the 14-15 games I've played, Only 2 of them have been an even match-up. 5 of those games were in the new champ-select, and none of them fit into those 2 games of a well-fought match. Other than those two games, I have won a game, or lost a game, solely for one or more of the following reasons:

• One team consists of players of a much higher caliber than the other team, thus resulting in a quick stomp
• One team has a single player on a hyper-carry champion against a lane of a much lower caliber than them, thus resulting in an easy lane and easy solo-carry
• One team has one or more disconnections (not counting intentional leavers) thus resulting in a 5v4
• One team has one or more troll players, which results in an easy game for the other team

Personal examples only? Kinda. Generalization using personal experience as a base? More like it. Most of my friends have said the same thing, really, or experienced with me in duo-queue.

Something I've heard is that the new matchmaking system Riot has is only effective in the new champ-select; however this "formula" of matchmaking, for lack of a better term, was put in place over the course of pre-season, before the new champ-select was released to the live servers. So the idea that making more balanced matches can only be achieved through the new champ-select could be a valid one, if the pre-season hadn't proved the opposite.

The second main point I want to touch on is disconnections, more specifically in ranked matchmaking, and the punishment that a player can get for disconnecting in a game. Players disconnecting from games has been a long-term problem with no real solution. The server move, while at first made it worse, had overall made things better. Until now, that is. As I mentioned in the last part, a handful of my games (I think around 5-6) have had one or more players disconnect throughout the course of the game. These players generally are disconnected for anywhere between 10 seconds, upwards to 2 minutes, and sometimes for most of the remainder of the match before reconnecting. In some cases, they will disconnect again, which puts them even further behind and can potentially lose a team the game. IF they ever reconnect, that is. I might be mistaken, but near the end of season 5, Riot had implemented a system where a loss was forgiven if a team had a disconnection in a game of a certain length. However, in the games I have played with a d/c, there has been no loss forgiven, even in a game where 4 players, 3 on my team, 1 on the other, disconnected at around the 5 minute mark never to return )I'm guessing this was during a server hiccup as everyone else in the game was experiencing ping increases. One of our players reconnects right as the game is ending, and says after the game he got placed in a lower priority queue despite "never [leaving], afk'[ing], or dc'[ing] in a few months!?" Taking what he said with a grain of salt of course, but if what he said is true, then he has to wait 20 minutes to play a game because of an issue on Riot's side.

And that's what I want to bring to light. In fact, me disconnecting in a game for a minute prompted me to write this (at first I thought my internet cut out for a minute but my parents were both connected through my d/c. Maybe my computer cut quickly, I'm not sure, but that's not the point). That disconnect not only cost me a kill, but it got me killed, and according to my team, lost us an early game fight that the enemy team was able to snowball on, eventually winning the game. After the game I got a notification saying that, due to my recent afk's and/or disconnections, I had been put in a lower priority queue for 5 games. Now, like I mentioned earlier, this will probably be taken with a grain of salt, but the last time I had left a game or afk'd in a game was stepping away for a few minutes during a private ARAM with some friends to grab some food after dying. This was back in early December and was also one the first games I had played after coming back from a 3 month hiatus. Again, I expect that to be ignored, because who trusts anyone on the internet, but the fact that people are getting placed in low priority queues for disconnecting in a ranked match (not to mention a disconnection that can be equated to the servers) without any previous offenses is disappointing, to say the least.

I use "disappointing" because, as much as I have started to dis-like Riot and the changes they've been doing to League, I fully respect them as a company, and understand how difficult it can be to make a game, and can only imagine the difficulty of making and maintaining a game as big as League is, and would rather not use more insulting words, such as "pathetic", "retarded" or "shows how little they know about the state of the game and it's community." Ok, maybe not that last one, but that can be an accurate statement depending on the topic. Regardless, it seems like a really harsh punishment for a one-time event that could potentially be a fault on Riot's side. Sure, it's only a 20 minute wait time, but that turns the 30-35 minutes dedicated period of time I spoke about early into an hour long dedication that some people may not have time for. Obviously, if a player has a history of leaving or afk'ing in games, then, while the disconnection may have been out of their control, they had a punishment coming eventually.

Before closing this off, I want to ask one last question: Why can players play duo-queue if their ranks will carry over to solo-queue once the new champion select is back in order? It doesn't seem to make much sense to me. Just a less controversial question to end the post :P

TL;DR - So far, Riot seems to have flat out lied about better balancing games, or at least reverted to the old matchmaking "formula" (again for lack of a better term) without letting us know. On top of that, the rate of disconnections is still fairly high and not only has Riot not said anything on the topic, they are handing out a relatively harsh punishment to players that do disconnect, whether it be their fault or not, even for first-time offenders.