Severely concerning - Everything I learned about this (flawed) ranked system from throwing matches.
(Disclaimer: While I did not play seriously at all on one of my accounts, I am in no way admitting that I 'purposely' threw anything, inted, or griefed my matches. All of this was for fun on a lower ranked account just starting out, and I learned a great deal about the system - and how flawed it is - as a result. I'm quite certain I'm going to receive a lot of flak for this, but I'm ok with that for educational purposes)
So, just to give you guys a general idea of what I'm talking about.. I played through my promos on a new-ish account (starting Iron 4), and I believe ending in bronze 4 or higher. After which I maintained around a 12-20% winrate (that's right twelve to twenty percent, in bronze), and learned quite a bit about the system from that. Now some of these statements I'm about to make may not necessarily be 100% the case, and my own speculation or assumptions on the matter.. but I'm pretty sure they are correct and figured I'd put them out there nonetheless. If I am however wrong about any of my conclusions, in particular anything glaring or poor logic, feel free to point it out and I'll make corrections (if not debate it).
-New accounts gain too much LP and this is causing many problems. New accounts get insanely large amounts of LP, due to the fact that Riot wants to simulate "placing in silver" like from the past seasons, except that now it's a more active approach to where you land, with visible numbers to the player. This a problem in and of itself, because it means players at potentially truly low skill level are still skipping promos and gaining obscene amounts of LP even after their provisionals are up.. because the system has to compensate by forcing MMR gains to be much higher than it would have in the past, due to LP gains being so high. Not much different from the old system in this regard, but the end result is worse given that LP gains don't decay fast enough after provisionals.
-Overcompensating MMR gains to match large LP gains. That's right, MMR amounts would have to be overcompensating and going up dramatically with each win to reach the LP gains that it's equivalent to, rather than the other way around. And this happens even with players from decent elos in preseason, giving them a lower rank but much much higher LP gains than they should have at that rank. The problem being that it takes a lot longer than it should for these LP gains to decay back to normal, and this means a lot of low skilled players are ending up in higher elos than they should. And with the opposite happening.. plat/diamond+ gaining much much lower LP at first (because it's set that way directly, rather than based on MMR), it's messing with their MMR in an opposite way.. and is precisely (at least largely) what's to blame for matchmaking being so bad right now.
-It is EXTREMELY difficult to be demoted in lower elos for a very very long time, until mmr/lp values catch up. Let's just say you 'can' try very very hard to lose all your matches, and even if you do go on an enormous loss streak.. you won't be demoted. For example, I had roughly 10 losses in bronze 2, 5 of those were AT 0 LP, before the 6th one finally demoted me. Meaning I had a 5 loss streak BEFORE I even hit 0 lp, and it still didn't demote me immediately.. it took 6 games at an already INSANELY low winrate for it to happen.
After which I decided to try my absolute hardest (for the fuck of it). Winning 3 games in a row, and somehow ended up SKIPPING AN ENTIRE DIVISION, and being tossed in bronze 1 from bronze 3.. after an 11 game loss streak, at around 16% wr. The worst part being that the entire time I was gaining 40+ LP (FORTY) and losing only 10-11.. despite having 30+ games already, with major major losses. The problem with this, and with lots of other points I'm making is that this is MASSIVELY removing skill from the equation, and adding in too many other variables and factors - much of which are simple numbers and math. Who wants to play a game where most people's ranks are predetermined by math, rather than skill level?? This was something that people had an issue with in the past seasons, and debated a lot about on these forums, but this season in particular is taking that gap and making it much much larger.
-What people say about forced 50% winrates is very very true on the opposite end as well. It is almost IMPOSSIBLE to lose matches, the lower your MMR gets for your rank. Let's say for "arguments sake" that someone threw match after match after match after match.. and eventually it got to a point where it became literally impossible to win, even hyperfeeding and inting the everliving fuck out of those matches.. the enemy players got so bad in comparison (due to mmr averages) to his own teammates, that there was literally nothing that could be done to throw at that point. The enemy players were so flat out beyond awful in comparison to his own 4 allies, it was as if they were literally throwing themselves onto said player's teammate's swords. And this continues on and on and on until that 'forced 50% winrate' starts to get closer.
But again, with HUGE LP GAINS (or severely low at higher elo til it normalizes), and huge differences in MMR.. there are much larger swings in these kinds of matches.. and the games are now more of a coin flip than individual or even full team skill.
-If you were low elo last season (in this case anything below gold), or had very very poor MMR. you're better off just starting a new account entirely, due to LP gains being absolutely massive if you do. And this is ESPECIALLY true for anyone in bronze or low silver. It's also true for anyone in low elo this season.. who's already struggling or at the point of getting 15-19 or so LP per match, in otherwords your MMR is "fucked" and you may as well start over. Might be easy to get that gold border/rewards right? Especially if you get 'lucky' because luck is a bigger part of league now than ever before.
And just so that you guys understand the reason I'm pointing this out.. This is NOT a recommendation for people to do this. I promise you that, no matter what else I've alluded to or not in this thread, my entire purpose for pointing this specific issue out is that THIS IS A PROBLEM. AND IT NEEDS TO BE FIXED. I personally WANT this to be fixed, even if I make new accounts myself. Along with many many other flaws and issues with the system.
-New ranked creates more problems with exactly what it was supposed to fix I understand that this new ranked system was intended on remedying a lot of issues with the old ranked system.. some being that they didn't want the majority of players to be in silver, with slightly lesser amounts in bronze and gold.. and then much much less as it goes up in elo. But this system is actually designed to do the exact damn opposite of fixing that. MORE players are going to end up being flooded into silver, especially given the above 'exploits', and especially given that higher elo players are now getting MUCH less LP than previous years, while iron/bronze are getting insane, unheard of amounts of LP, even long after their provisionals. Essentially making having BOTH iron and bronze, pointless tiers to even have exist.. let alone iron itself.
In other words, Riot wanted to stop the "ending up in silver no matter what" thing from happening, especially if said players truly belong lower than that and also wanted to spread more players throughout all ranks, preventing them all from being pooled into low elo.. with this new ranked system. The problem being, that BOTH of these things are happening MORE now, instead. And it should have been very very obvious for the design team to forsee this.
-If you begin to lose a match, or something is particularly unwinnable.. you can either swap lanes with someone, or flat out go to their lane and 'take it over', which will completely avoid LP loss for your main role (or whatever role you queued as atm). This in and of itself is a major issue, as if the fact that players can just flat out troll when they get autofilled because.. "who the fuck cares?".. isn't bad enough. Again, not something I'm pointing out for people to go and do. I'm saying this because this is something Riot NEEDS to aknowledge and fix.
-Players will NOT eventually end up where they belong At least not as well as the old system would have done it. These overcompensating LP to MMR gains are what are majorly to blame for matchmaking being so bad right now yes? Players are bouncing around like crazy in and out of elos they don't belong in, gaining more LP and MMR than they should have.. most previously low elo players will hit a place like silver or gold and and then sit on it, ending their ranked adventures right there. Plenty will start new accounts, either as smurfs from higher elos, or players who gave up on their incessantly low elo MMR accounts (due entirely to the fact that they've played before, essentially punishing loyal players and people who buy skins).
-It's a conspiracy! Well not really.. but think about it. Why did Riot prevent OP.gg from calculating MMR any longer? Is it because Riot knows that MMR calculations are going to be all over the fucking place now and don't want us to see it any longer? Is it because Riot knows that increased MMR gains and losses too much, to overcompensate for LP gains and losses - which explains why the last 8 seasons this kind of thing was ok but not anymore (coincidence? I think not)? Are all of Riot's programmers actually Lizardmen sent from the planes of hell to invoke an addiction to a toxic game season the likes of which has never before been seen, all so they can suck our souls out through our very eye sockes and into our monitors to feed their perpetual machines of ungodly immortality? Probably not. But it could happen..
TL;DR Just to be clear, the biggest issue I have is that there's far too much handicap given, followed by far too much overcompensation for said handicap.. until things 'normalize'. BUT my point is that it's an issue that isn't going to resolve itself as easily as it has in the past seasons, if at all.
And a bit about me.. sadly after writing all of this I can say I didn't play ranked for quite a while due to personal reason, but I kept up on the game's meta.. ranked systems and changes for a long time, along with the little bit that I did. Last preseason I played a total of about 1 1/2 to 2 weeks, and managed to climb from silver 3 to plat 4 promos before it ended, with a peaking MMR of 2200 - which in old standards is equal to roughly diamond 5. Not amazing, but relevant I think. I can't play ranked as much as I like, but I safely consider my game knowledge to be very very extensive, and I feel as though this ranked system has far too many disadvantage, and very little... (if any?) actual real benefits to it. It's not terrible.. it could certainly be worse, a whopping failure like Dynamic Queue was lol.
The good news is Riot said they might revert it, or maybe at least make changes to it if it turns out to not work too great...
