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Matchmaking issues - League's matchmaking in general seems completely unbalanced much too often

Kensiko··1 votes·981 views

Hi,

Not sure if this is the place to post something like this, but I've honestly been getting more and more frustrated with League's matchmaking in general in the past year, whether I'm playing ranked games or normal games. Honestly, I don't expect the system to be perfect ; that's just impossible. But I do expect it to provide me with a majority of well balanced games, where either team could end up on top at the end. I mean, that's the goal isn't it?

However, quite to the contrary, a vast majority of my games are strongly tipped in the favor of one team or the other, and I just don't get how it can be this bad. I just played a normal game with some friends as a full premade. Our team consisted of 3 silvers and 2 bronzes and we were up against 2 platinums, 2 golds and 1 silver in the other team.

I understand that matching full premades can be harder, but how is this fair? Or how do you honestly expect us to have fun playing such a game? Even the other team mentioned that the matchmaking was flawed, and they were winning. They literally mopped the floor with us : we didn't even have the slightest chance of doing anything worthwhile throughout the whole game.

Here is the game in question for reference : http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1992778831/39474736?tab=overview

And the same thing happens in ranked solo queue. Sure, I won't face any platinum people, because it uses our ranks there more closely. But as a Silver 2 player at the moment, I've seen some low silvers play extremely well who should be much higher, and some gold players who were worse than my friends who are bronze. I simply don't get it, and I've had discussions with friends about this and we can't wrap our heads around how the matchmaking can mess up so often, and so bad. I honestly don't mind losing, but it just frustrates me to play a game and realise within the first 10 minutes, so very often, that we are going to lose...

I kind of doubt it as I haven't seen any improvements on this in all of the last year, but I sincerely hope someone at Riot realises how abysmal their matchmaking system is so that they can try to improve it.

4 Comments

Sasogwa1 votes

And I sincerely hope that you understand that the matchmaking in normals have nothing to do with the one in ranked, so people that have played very few normals and a lot of ranked are likely to get matched with people with lower skill. Also, the level disparity in ranked queues is usually caused by smurf/boosters which is pretty much an undetectable thing. And who knows, someone might have a lucky streak and isn't a booster so it's kinda hard to say 'oh this guy has a good winstreak let's directly put him with really high elo other ppl'. (Still, MMR snowballs when you winstreak anyway). You see, it's great to point out that matchmaking isn't that good. It's another thing to make it better. If anything, the current matchmaking, well it's very hard to make it better, knowing all the factors that put desequilibrated teams together. So before you complain, come out with an algorithm of yourself that would be effectively better than the current one. Or ideas to improve the current one. Or ask people to answer in this thread with ideas to improve it. Because you're basically bringing nothing to the table by just saying it's not good.

Korillo1 votes

You are 102-101 in ranked. Seems it is balancing just fine for you.

Kensiko1 votes

Sure if you just look at my win rate it seems balanced, I'll give you that. But it doesn't change the fact that most games are strongly tipped in favor of one team or another. Rubber banding from a huge win to a huge loss (or vice versa) as long as you have a stable win-loss ratio isn't my idea of sound balance. Or of fun.

@Sasogwa, you're totally right that I'm not bringing anything to the table. I'd love to : however, developing algorithms isn't something I'm necessarily good at. Also, I've tried to find concrete information on how the MMR system actually works (my friends have tried as well), without success. All I've managed to find is guesses and conjecture. Maybe I just haven't had success in my research? If you know of a site that accurately explains how the matchmaking and MMR system works I'd love to have a look because it really intrigues me.

Otherwise, it'd be hard to comment and propose improvements to a system that is pretty much a mysterious mystery. xD

I'm also aware that normal games' matchmaking and ranked matchmaking are different. And this IS something I could propose some improvements on. I think it would make a lot of sense to have someone's ranked stats affect his normal games' matchmaking (but not the other way around). It simply doesn't make sense to pit players with high levels in Ranked against players with low ranks in a normal game, just because "it's not Ranked, therefore it's different". Those people have achieved those ranks through hard work and skill usually, so that's something that should be taken into account in Normal matchmaking as well.

However, the other way around wouldn't make as much sense, because you would want to have the Ranked matchmaking stay in its own "bubble" in a sense. Otherwise people would avoid Normal games altogether in order to not affect their Ranked MMR, which would just break things even more.

Korillo1 votes

{quoted}

Sure if you just look at my win rate it seems balanced, I'll give you that. But it doesn't change the fact that most games are strongly tipped in favor of one team or another. Rubber banding from a huge win to a huge loss (or vice versa) as long as you have a stable win-loss ratio isn't my idea of sound balance. Or of fun.

@Sasogwa, you're totally right that I'm not bringing anything to the table. I'd love to : however, developing algorithms isn't something I'm necessarily good at. Also, I've tried to find concrete information on how the MMR system actually works (my friends have tried as well), without success. All I've managed to find is guesses and conjecture. Maybe I just haven't had success in my research? If you know of a site that accurately explains how the matchmaking and MMR system works I'd love to have a look because it really intrigues me.

Otherwise, it'd be hard to comment and propose improvements to a system that is pretty much a mysterious mystery. xD

I'm also aware that normal games' matchmaking and ranked matchmaking are different. And this IS something I could propose some improvements on. I think it would make a lot of sense to have someone's ranked stats affect his normal games' matchmaking (but not the other way around). It simply doesn't make sense to pit players with high levels in Ranked against players with low ranks in a normal game, just because "it's not Ranked, therefore it's different". Those people have achieved those ranks through hard work and skill usually, so that's something that should be taken into account in Normal matchmaking as well.

However, the other way around wouldn't make as much sense, because you would want to have the Ranked matchmaking stay in its own "bubble" in a sense. Otherwise people would avoid Normal games altogether in order to not affect their Ranked MMR, which would just break things even more.

Hi, so looking at your last 20 ranked games, we have the following:

Average game time = 34 minutes 6 seconds Average Gold Difference = 9.7k KDA: 4.0 / 5.5 / 11.7 (2.87:1 KDA with a 50% Kill contribution) Record = 9 Wins 11 Losses Roles played: Top - 6 games (Record of 4W 2L) Jungle - 8 games (Record of 2W 6L) Mid - 0 games ADC - 3 games (Record of 1W 2L) Support - 3 games (Record of 2W 1L)

In these 20 games, you played 13 different champions.

Based on the length of the games and the gold differences, it would seem the majority of your games have been relatively close. You have played 13 different champions in these 20 games, which is a pretty wide variance. You may find you have more success if you stick to a smaller champion pool until you feel more comfortable with a wider variety of champions.

Your preferred role over these 20 games appears to be jungle, but your record in that role is 2-6 with a KDA of 2.51 (Below your overall average of 2.87). However, based on all your ranked games played in season 5, you have 59 games played on Jinx (with a 53% win record) and 36 games played on Caitlyn (with a 61% win rate).

You only have 3 ADC games played over your past 20, yet 8 jungle games and 6 top games, so it appears you are attempting to change the role you prefer to play. With the results shown over the past 20 games, it's not uncommon to struggle a little when making a change like this, as you may be a better ADC then jungle/top, and making the change is hurting your performance a little (sorry if this appears to be harsh, I don't mean it to be).

Based on your last 5 games (which you have gone 0-5), it appears 4 of them have been a bit one sided, with all 5 games having at least 1 extremely fed enemy, so you may be feeling a bit of confirmation bias based on these past 5 games, which is completely understandable. Losing streaks like this can be a little frustrating. However, it does seem like the system overall is doing a pretty good job matching you with opponents who are close to your skill level.

You may have more success if you switch back to playing Jinx and Caitlyn in the ADC role. However, if you are enjoying the jungle and top play, I would encourage you to keep at it and focus on your gameplay and doing things that will help you improve.

Good luck!

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