Ranked System and Adaptive Runes Thoughts

Not sure if this belongs in gameplay but, putting it here.

I have been playing League of Legends since season 2, I have no idea how many hours, but I do have the Veteran 3 emote. League of Legends has been a staple in my life after work for some time, I have invested many nights on the ranked ladder, watching streams, pro play, and videos to learn how to play the game more effectively.

Riot Games has made some missteps which have caused me to take multiple Season breaks from the game though, mostly champion reworks. I am just coming back from over a year break from the game and got to Diamond IV within 75 games. After those ~75 or less games I would like to express some frustrations I have.

Adaptive Runes- Can’t we just choose which type of stat we want without editing the current runes interface hardly at all? It’s a shame for someone who wants to pick something like Nidalee top and can’t take corrupting pot, or dorans ring without losing a ton of flat AD early game.

Ranked Tier System - As of Season 3, Riot Games decided to revamp the ranked system by changing the ELO, to Tiers. While ELO still exists, we have no idea what Riot has done to the system because ELO is hidden. They have replaced it with tiers that show off your rank gated by promotional series. They say this was to help with ladder anxiety, and to give ranked a new and better look.

My problems do not stem from the tier system, although I would prefer a revert to ELO representation, it is not needed.

There are a few problems I have with the current system, which are: Division IV cannot fall tiers unless your MMR is a whole tier under.

What that means is, a Platinum IV player cannot fall to Gold until their MMR is so low that they are almost playing with Silver players.

This creates a mentality in players, as soon as they hit division IV, to not care. Granted, their MMR will quickly fall out of Platinum, Diamond, or wherever they are.. But that doesn’t stop them from having the negative win mentality in the games while they currently still have okay MMR. This also means a player who really hovers in Low/Mid Plat can retain a Diamond border despite not being a Diamond level player. This is why we see Diamond IV 0 LP players who do not seem to be on the level of Diamond, with massive egos. They are more toxic, not always in chat, but in picks, pings, and in game play.

Another problem with the Ranked System would be the decay system, which was good until maybe around Season 6 when Riot decided to make it harder to decay. It now takes a longer duration which seems to be DOUBLED what it used to be, so you can realistically get boosted to Diamond IV, and play 1 game every 28 days, impossible to lose enough games to get to Plat IV MMR and lose your Diamond border. This is why we evidently get ACTUAL boosted players occasionally in our games around Mid Plat to low Diamond MMR.

I don’t really care for the free Promos win thing, as it doesn’t really affect MMR, but it should only take effect if your MMR is higher than your current rank. A Gold IV MMR player should not get a free promo win to Gold II.

I know MMR is your true ELO but these Divisions are what our rewards are based off of, not MMR. So we should make Divisions more accurate to a player’s MMR, rather than the opposite steps that Riot has taken over the last few years. You should decay in Diamond every 2 weeks of not playing.