SMALL CHANGE TO MAKE RANKED A LITTLE LESS FRUSTRATING

!! LONG POST, TL;DR VERSION IN COMMENT!!

First of all, I'd like to say that this is one of my first posts on the Boards, so be gentle senpai. Also, I'm not even sure this is the best board to post this in, but it seemed to fit the most.

Anyway, a while back, my friends and I had an idea that was met with very positive feedback when presented to every league player we've come in contact with so far. What we are proposing is not a huge change, just a small quality-of-life tweak to the LP system that removes something everybody finds frustrating: Finishing a game and having 98-99 LP.

Normally, in the ranked ladder, playing a game comes with a risk/reward factor that feels balanced. "If I play this game and win, I'll climb up ~20 LP, but if I lose, I'm dropping down ~17." This encourages play, because you want the reward enough to take the risk. And, in a series, it switches to "If I win this game, I'm one game closer to promoting, but if I lose, I'm one game closer to failing promos."

Now, let's look at a player stuck at 99 LP after a ranked game. He's not yet in a series, so his next game doesn't directly affect his promotion. Instead, the risk/reward factor here is "If I lose, I'm dropping down ~17 whole LP, but if I win, I'm only gaining 1 point." In my experience and that of my friends, this is not enough incentive to want to play, and unless I've already been on a ranked grind, I often will just not want to play that game, and I'll go do something else, often putting it off for a very long time, up to a week or two in some cases. This is not extremely common, but enough to be a present problem, and not healthy in a competitive environment. Some people have suggested having a "soft cap" for promotion, or saying "If you end a game with between 95 and 100 LP, congrats, you're in promos!" And while this sounds nice, it does absolutely nothing, considering all that happens now is players get hit with 94 LP finishes, and the problem doesn't get solved, merely shifted down.

Now, for my idea I propose, instead, a "middle grounds" area. What I mean by this is, set an LP range, say 95-99, or 90-99, and the value of this could be changed easily by beta testing. Then, if a player finishes a match within this Gray Area, his next match becomes a sort of hybrid between promos and normal games. If the player wins his next game, a series begins, and the last game is counted as the first match in the series. So, the victory counts towards promotion. However, if the player loses, LP is deducted like normal, and the ranked grind continues as normal. Now, a player with, say, 98 LP has the risk/reward of "If I lose, I lose ~17 LP, but if I win I'm one game closer to promoting!" This is much more fair to the player than the previous system, and creates a much healthier incentive, without giving up any integrity to the ranked climb. From what I can see, there are no downsides to this system, and it can only benefit the player and the community as a whole.

However, it is possible that there might be factors I've missed, or that I don't know about or understand. It might also be that there is an even better way to implement this that I haven't thought about. So, guys, give feedback! Tell your friends, share this post, get the word out! let's get rid of one of the most annoying parts of the ranked grind! And sorry for the long post, I want it to be official in case Rito gets a chance to look at it. Anyway, yeah, that's what I've got.