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Why are dodging penalties and autofill bad for matchmaking?!

RlCKY BOBBY·3/13/2019, 1:44:04 AM·60 votes·17,056 views

There are a lot of people who think dodging shouldn't be a part of the game because it's annoying. They couldn't be more wrong. Riots matchmaking system for League of Legends is designed to create even odds for both teams at the start of the game.

The issue with this is that when we take 10 COMPLEX PEOPLE and put them into a lobby, it's simply based off of MMR rankings. Winrate, K/D/A, past games played on that day, don't factor into the system, only MMR does.

So what purpose does dodging have in a league of legends? IT IS A TOOL THAT PLAYERS HAVE TO CORRECT ANY FAILURES OF THE SYSTEM TO CREATE EVEN ODDS!!!!!!!!!!

If you get an all ad team into rammus, leona, garen. or a one-trick that gets autofilled (has a 10% wr in off-role), or an all ap team into galio, kassadin, etc.

In matches where players have a fair understanding of the game, champion select has a huge impact on the flow of matches.

When the MMR system matches 10 players together, the game is supposed to be even. IMMEDIATELY AFTER THEY GET INTO CHAMPION SELECT, THIS CHANGES FOR BETTER OF FOR WORSE. Players are able to calculate their odds based on the game knowing they possess.

SOMETIMES, players can tell when matchmaking fucked them.. For that reason, we have the ability to dodge.

BUT WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THAT ABILITY TO DODGE IS IMPAIRED BY EXCESSIVE PENALTIES?

In the most simple terms, we get 1.) players who decide to play matches where the odds are stacked against them, we get 2.) players who accept the penalty, and we get 3.) players who troll champion select to force the dodge penalties on someone else.

The old ranked system had a lot of players in group #2 and group #3, with some in group #1. The positional queues system has seen a shift of these players into group #1.

Where does my data come from? ---Intuition and statistical analysis---

Most people like to create the best outcome for themselves. They play league of legends for fun, but winning is more fun, and losing is less fun.

Because of dodging penalties, you get a guaranteed loss by dodging, you need to wait 6-30 min to queue up again, and you lose 3-10 LP.

It's safe to say, that someone will dodge 100% of the time, with projected odds of 0% (2 players pick nunu and rammus and say they are going to run down mid). The penalty is clearly worth not losing, nor is playing with a 0-50 nunu+rammus.

But with a 10 LP loss and a 30-minute timer, there's barely any difference between losing to feeders or to dodge penalties. So we this youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYv6HdiLnMQ where 2 diamond 5 players get a combined score of 1-75 and still win. INTeresting..

When this happens, the nunu and rammus would fall into group #3, while their teammates would fall into group #1. We can speculate that the nunu and rammus had their champions banned so they tried to force their team to dodge instead of incurring a penalty, and their team didn't think it was worth it to dodge.

Some players fit into group #2. These guys are your knight in shining armor. When matchmaking fucks you, they save everyone's ass from terrible/unlucky matchmaking

But because of dodge penalties, these guys are far and few (the best option is usually to play games out, -trolling champ select isnt effective at getting players to dodge, because dodging is a guaranteed big loss -which means that the tool players have to correct the matchmaking systems inability to provide even matchmaking is rendered ineffective.

Dodge penalties basically provide quicker matches with less quality control on matchmaking Along with autofill, match quality drops even further because no one wants to play off-role against their will

Reverting positional queues will only cause a shift of players who don't dodge, to players that force dodges upon their teammates.

If you get autofilled in the positional queue system, 1.) you can feed, ff at 15, and go next with a 3LP loss in your main role. -no big deal- 2.) or you can dodge, wait 30 minutes, and lose 0 lp in your main role.

3.) trolling so someone dodges is ineffective because penalties are minimum either way.

This is the reason positional queues failed.

BUT, what happens when we go back to the old system

1.) If you get autofilled, play, then feed, you'll probably lose a full 20 lp because there is only one rank. 2.) if you dodge, you lose 3-10 LP in your main rank and wait 6-30 min to play another game BUT 3.) if you troll your teammates and force them to dodge, you dont lose, and you dont get penalized. There is only one role, and everyone loses full LP+MMR, so the best way for everyone to win is for someone to dodge (Trolling champ select encourages someone to dodge because people are too smart to bet on winning)

3.) Becomes a proxy for the tool used for creating even matchmaking.

So, If 3. becomes the dominant way people create even matchmaking, that means 2. gets penalized for being the good guy, 3. wins by being the bad guy, and 1. loses if noone is the good guy.

Because such is the case after tommorow, Riot has a duty to eliminate 1. 2. and 3..

Riot should edit dodge penalties in a manner that allows dodging to be a tool that creates even matchmaking without creating toxic behavior.

Lastly, I feel like I should address how a lack of dodge penalties might effect cheating.

If you dodge enough times, you might be able to create FAVORABLE odds, without dodge penalties, this could be an effective way of climbing the ladder.

The only issue with this is that skill remains a massive bias against players who use such methods to climb. Dodging is a tool to prevent dogshit matchmaking. With everyone on even ground, dogshit matches should be weeded out. This means that anyone who tries to dodge until they get rammus 5 AD champs isn't going to play, because noone is going to play such a dogshit matchup. So dodging is not an effective means for climbing.

This introduces a NEW issue. That people will become so obsessed with getting even matchmaking that queue times will go down the drain.

If this is the case, the simple fix would be to increase dodge penalties (I believe this will be far below the excessive 30 min, 10 lp) which is why I've made this post.

tldr; As league players, we are sacrificing good matchmaking for shorter queue times (autofill+high dodge penalties/no checks on bad matchmaking).

Please upvote this post so we can get RIOT in on the conversation about dodging and autofill!

Please leave comments with your opinions, I'll do my best to respond often!

73 Comments

SweedishGunner3/13/2019, 2:08:35 AM39 votes

I wish Riot gave us something like three free dodges a day. Currently one of the worst experiences is being held hostage in a lobby since there's no positive solution, you either waste time in game or lose LP/wait for another lobby.

skills of luck3/13/2019, 2:12:27 AM6 votes

First off, you really can't design a game with trolls in mind, in a developers mind they will eventually be weeded out thru reports (I know reporting rarely does shit, but that's the only true function riot has currently implemented against them)

A big problem with your idea is that it will literally screw OTPs on non-meta champs over, let's say you 1 trick teemo top lane (god forbid), you're probably just not gonna get a game for a very long time. Maybe your REALLY good at teemo, but most ppl arent gonna even give u a chance because dodging doesn't hurt.

ValyrianBlade3/13/2019, 1:29:24 PM5 votes

Have to say that I really disagree with you, and am surprised at the sheer number of upvotes this post is getting...

Dodging is a balance equation - if you dodge to avoid a bad match, you contribute to improving your win rate. That's because if you're ALWAYS going to dodge bad matches, you'll never be in the losing side of a bad match. However it's still possible for you to be on the winning side of a bad match, as there's no guarantee your opponents will dodge a bad match.

You make the claim that eliminating dodge penalties would self-correct this, and I agree that claim is accurate. If there was no dodge penalty, there would be no reason to play any match that you felt you had an under 50% chance of winning. However, once both sides apply that logic - no match would EVER get played. Someone is always going to be counter picked, or on an off role, or feel like one of their allies has been having a bad day, etc... and will dodge. So you don't get to play the game, and that's dumb.

You further argue that we could reinstate a dodge penalty to counter that. Wow - so we're back where we started? You claim that the penalty should be much smaller than the current 10LP / 30min - however that's not the current penalty. The penalty is 3LP / 6 min.

So... Riot has already done exactly what you're asking them to do. What exactly is the complaint?

IF you're dodging 2+ times to get the larger 10LP / 30min penalty - you're either dodging too many games or playing too many games. In the former case - escalating the dodge penalty makes sense. You shouldn't be able to use dodges as a way to find favorable matches, which is what you're doing. You list in your post that one reason for dodging can be that a teammate has had some bad games that day. It's hardly fair to your teammate that he can't get into a new game because he had 2 or 3 bad games earlier that day. You weren't in those games, you don't know why he had 2 or 3 losses or why he may have had bad KDAs in those games. If everyone applied your logic, that player would never get to play - hardly seems fair.

In the latter case - I can agree that dodge penalties resetting should be based on the number of games played between dodges rather than an out-of-game timer. That WASN'T your post. It IS a reasonable answer though. If you dodge, then play 3+ games without dodging, perhaps you should be permitted another dodge. Most players aren't playing 4+ games each day, so it works out for them the same way. For people who play a lot, it's understandable that they'd need to dodge more often.

I ALSO agree with the sentiment that players should earn free dodges in some way. Especially for promo series. Being unable to dodge due to being in a promo series and getting a clear troll on your team is a terrible feeling - especially when I'm a player that has dodged a grand total of 2 ranked games over the last 4 years. I ONLY dodge clear trolls (and accept that I won't always have a favorable team comp), yet I've only had clear trolls in non-promo games twice and have gotten them in promo games far more often. It would make sense that playing 20, 50, or even 100 consecutive games without dodging should grant a free dodge in a promo series. Especially since when you're in a promo series it's more likely that you'll get the troll on your team (since other players can dodge the troll and force a relobby, the troll will eventually end up on your team. If you only have a limited time available to play then the option is to either not play at all that day [possibly that week] or to risk getting the troll on your team, which as mentioned is far more likely since you have only 3 allies that could dodge for you while the enemy team has 4).

I don't think the dodging system is perfect - but I think your proposal doesn't help it.

Karunamon3/13/2019, 2:52:57 PM4 votes

The one thing I think is absolute shyte is how dodging in a promo series results in a loss being recorded for the series.

That's a bit much for a penalty. The timer, okay, fine, scale it exponentially if you have to. Don't fuck up my ranked climb because of champ select trolls.

Metal Janna3/13/2019, 6:40:20 AM4 votes

If Riot were to tighten the allowable MMR variation between teams, this would lengthen queue times but also create a perception of fairer matches. This would have a double effect in reducing dodges: people are less willing to dodge when queue times are long, and people are less motivated to dodge if the match looks fairer. Sounds like a win-win-lose to me. The only downside is longer queue times... which would be partially offset by the reduction in dodges. A fair trade in my opinion.

Terchio3/13/2019, 4:59:29 AM3 votes

I do appreciate the analysis of the impacts of the Dodge system, it is very intriguing. However, the Dodge system should not be quality control, that's what behavior control is for.

Sure, it sucks if you get the unlucky game of the day, but we all get those occasionally.

Riots matchmaking system for League of Legends is designed to create even odds for both teams at the start of the game.

The issue with this is that when we take 10 COMPLEX PEOPLE and put them into a lobby, it's simply based off of MMR rankings. Winrate, K/D/A, past games played on that day, don't factor into the system, only MMR does.

MMR is based off of something, my guess is all 3 factor in heavily. I'm not sure what you feel MMR is based on, but overall, it feels pretty accurate on skill level to me. As you mentioned, there are intangibles that sway one game from another, like current lane matchup and incompatible playstyles.

five oh tree 3/13/2019, 9:15:16 PM3 votes

You have some good points and have created a thoughtful discussion. However, I believe you are wrong, and in the following paragraphs I will outline why.

We can speculate that the nunu and rammus had their champions banned so they tried to force their team to dodge instead of incurring a penalty, and their team didn't think it was worth it to dodge.

Absolute and total conjecture which you claim as a support column for your thought points. We have no way of knowing why they trolled and inted as we have no access to champ select chat logs.

The issue with this is that when we take 10 COMPLEX PEOPLE and put them into a lobby, it's simply based off of MMR rankings. Winrate, K/D/A, past games played on that day, don't factor into the system, only MMR does.

You're using complex as a buzzword to artificially increase how complicated this issue seems to readers. The character of the people in the game does not matter. MMR is essentially a rating of how good someone is at winning their games; all other stats are irrelevant when matching people. If you focus purely on mechanics, the variance in plat 4 is insane. The mechanically gifted scoff at their lesser teammates and think themselves superior; however, they also clearly lack something the other has, or they wouldn't be in the same game. That person with garbage mechanics probably has FAR superior lane control/vision control/rotation to be able to win the same amount of games against the same enemies.

MMR is the correct way to balance things.

So what purpose does dodging have in a league of legends? IT IS A TOOL THAT PLAYERS HAVE TO CORRECT ANY FAILURES OF THE SYSTEM TO CREATE EVEN ODDS!!!!!!!!!!

If you get an all ad team into rammus, leona, garen. or a one-trick that gets autofilled (has a 10% wr in off-role), or an all ap team into galio, kassadin, etc.

In matches where players have a fair understanding of the game, champion select has a huge impact on the flow of matches.

When the MMR system matches 10 players together, the game is supposed to be even. IMMEDIATELY AFTER THEY GET INTO CHAMPION SELECT, THIS CHANGES FOR BETTER OF FOR WORSE. Players are able to calculate their odds based on the game knowing they possess.

SOMETIMES, players can tell when matchmaking fucked them.. For that reason, we have the ability to dodge.

Dodging in this scenario is an acknowledgement of being outdrafted, which is part of the strategic element of this game. You outlined the whole reason here that there IS a dodge penalty: the draft phase is an expression of skill. It is the first stage of the game. By removing a penalty, you are removing an expression of skill and strategy from the game. It's like turning a skillshot into a point -> click.

In the most simple terms, we get 1.) players who decide to play matches where the odds are stacked against them, we get 2.) players who accept the penalty, and we get 3.) players who troll champion select to force the dodge penalties on someone else.

Don't let someone extort a dodge out of you. It's that simple. Take the L if you must; it is their LP on the line as well. No matter what someone tells you, leveling an account to 30 or buying one is worth more than ~18 LP. They will be banned after a few games of trolling and have to spend time or money to do it again. Would you rather lose 18 LP or $10?

You're also creating a false di(tri?)chotomy here. There's at least one more option: people who learn how to draft well and not alienate their teammates. I don't have evidence for this outside anecdotes, but how many trolls inted without being provoked? I can think of 2-3 times in my 6 years of playing league that I witnessed this.

It's all one big learning curve. You are supposed to work with your team. Selfish decisions to ban someone else's champ or refuse to play an autofilled role are not conducive to winning. It's a skill you must hone, or your trolling behavior will get you banned. The antagonist and the troll both punish each other by ruining the game. There are unfortunate victims as well, but that problem is neither realistically solvable nor within the scope of this reply.

Where does my data come from? ---Intuition and statistical analysis---

I can't tell if this is a satirical quote or not and I'm not trying to offend you by taking it seriously or questioning its seriousness.

That being said, flawed intuition and analysis of nonexistent statistics are not valid support to your argument. We have no facts or data to analyze and this is all conjecture alongside anecdote.

Because of dodging penalties, you get a guaranteed loss by dodging, you need to wait 6-30 min to queue up again, and you lose 3-10 LP.

This is part of the solution, actually. You theoretically will not encounter more than one troll-y scenario a day, so 3 LP is a next-to-nonexistent penalty.

What about the 6 minutes, you ask? That should be used to untilt yourself from whatever you witnessed in champ select that caused you to dodge. This is highly beneficial to you. Use it.

They (Riot) up the penalties because they are trying to preserve the integrity of matchmaking. They do not want 5-8 dodges before every single game, so they throw on 10 LP as the next penalty. It is not a perfect solution. It is also not a bad one, in my opinion.

1.) If you get autofilled, play, then feed, you'll probably lose a full 20 lp because there is only one rank. 2.) if you dodge, you lose 3-10 LP in your main rank and wait 6-30 min to play another game BUT 3.) if you troll your teammates and force them to dodge, you dont lose, and you dont get penalized. There is only one role, and everyone loses full LP+MMR, so the best way for everyone to win is for someone to dodge (Trolling champ select encourages someone to dodge because people are too smart to bet on winning)

This is only relevant if you're incapable of playing more than 2 roles, which is absurd if you've been playing long enough to play ranked. An autofill should not be a guaranteed loss, and if it is, you can remedy that by learning the roles to a capable level.

Dodging to avoid autofill is counter-intuitive; you're just as likely to get autofilled in your next lobby after the dodge.

You can try and troll your teammates and attempt to force their dodge, but through doing this you are

  • Creating the scenario where you most assuredly lose LP
  • Asking to be banned
  • Wasting your own time

There are no winners here.

The only reasonable solutions are to be able to play at least 1 champ in all 5 roles (wow imagine that), or ask your teammates to take your autofilled role when it happens. Most of the time, in my experience, someone would rather take on that burden than let someone completely unprepared ruin their game.

I can appreciate the frustration and where your argument comes from; we've all been trolled in champ select before. I just simply don't believe the system has a better solution than the one in place.

Try thinking of a solution that completely inhibits trolls while preserving ranked integrity. If you have one, I'd love to discuss and dissect it. I personally cannot think of one in the time it took me to type this all out.

TL;DR: Your argument lacks support in some areas and there doesn't seem to be a purely winning solution available, so we are stuck with what we have.

Leonerdo3/13/2019, 11:19:47 PM2 votes

This is really well written. I agree with most of the concepts (but not the call-to-arms). I mean at first, I just saw your obvious bias and was like, "Oh okay, you like to dodge a lot, to get supposedly better match-ups. So of course you want lighter penalties." But after that your arguments were pretty solid, and they considered multiple perspectives, so I have to give you some credit.

Obviously there has to be a balance, because as you said, having NO penalties at all would just lead to a never-ending series of dodges to try and get a slight advantage from champion select. Sure, people would eventually get tired of it and just go with "good enough" so they can actually start a game, but it would probably still take way longer than is acceptable. And on the other hand, a strict no-dodge policy would result in more awful, lost-in-champ-select games. So we need penalties, but they should be light enough that they are worth taking when faced with an unusually bad champion select.

And here's where I disagree with you: I think the current system actually strikes a good balance. At least, the first penalty is properly tuned (-3LP and 6 minutes). I don't think I have to explain that -3LP is a quite acceptable compared to a -15LP loss. It's even worth taking in not-so-bad situations where you think you still have a 30-40% chance to win. So I don't think it's too heavy of a penalty. (Btw, to those who think we should get 1 or 2 free dodges per day, I think that would just lead to a "use it or lose it" mentality where people just dodge because they can, and because they might get a better match-up. And potentially there would be more #3 type people who bully others to use their free dodge.)

The only thing I think could be changed is the higher penalty after the first. It's probably a good to leave some kind of escalating penalty, just as a hint to players that "dodging once every now and then is fine, but 3+ times a day is maybe a bit excessive." But I do think -10LP and 30 minutes is a little excessive. And there's a side-effect in the current system such that people who play more games in a row are more heavily restricted by the current "per-day" system. A per-game allowance would surely be more fair.

So my suggestion is: Dodging once per 5-6 games played should be acceptable, and incur only a small penalty of -3LP and 6 minutes. (Still worth it to dodge bad teams, occasionally.) Dodging more often than that should cost -8LP and 30 minutes. (Worth it to dodge VERY bad teams, but .) The details of implementation can be tweaked, but I think you get the idea. Edit: Maybe allowing players to bank their discounted dodges (up to 3, built up over 21 games), would help them deal with unlucky streaks.

Bonus math section: If there's a 50% chance for a dodge in any champion select, then it would take (on average) 2 attempts to get through champ select and play a game. If it's just a 20% chance for a dodge, then the average is 1.25 attempts per game played. And at 70% dodge rate, it starts to get ridiculous, requiring 3.33 champion selects per game. This allows us to make a pretty good metric to aim for: IMO, as long as champion select is failing less than 50% of the time, we're doing okay.

But, keep in mind that that chance is split across all 10 players in a game, so each player can't dodge more than 5% of the time. Of course there is some variance between players (some people never dodge), so let's say a 10% dodge rate for dodge-friendly players should be the limit. Hence my suggestion above, to allow one semi-free dodge per 5 games played: 5 games x 2 champ selects per game (assuming our worst-case 50% overall dodge rate) = 10 champion selects per dodge = 10% individual dodge rate allowed, before the penalty gets higher.

If players are more trigger-happy with dodging than I assume, then the penalty has to get harder, faster. The hardest penalties that are necessary to ensure a maximum champion select failure rate of 50 is: one cheap dodge per 10 games played, and then extreme penalties (-15 LP) after.

Starcraft243ver3/13/2019, 12:24:15 PM2 votes

Where does my data come from? ---Intuition and statistical analysis---

Am I the only one who just couldnt stop laughting at this ? (and also was a bit sad inside).

Quepha3/13/2019, 4:16:44 PM1 votes

Picks/Bans is supposed to be a part of the strategy of the game. The match begins when you click "Accept".

If you get an all ad team into rammus, leona, garen. or a one-trick that gets autofilled (has a 10% wr in off-role), or an all ap team into galio, kassadin, etc.

If you have a bad pick/ban phase like this then you DESERVE to lose. Do pro teams get a mulligan if the enemy got a good pick or they didn't realize the enemy top has Riven as a pocket pick? I don't think so.

Dodging is basically the same as surrendering the game and should come with the penalty of a full loss for admitting that you lost (and likewise the benefit of a full win for the team that did so well in champ select that they made someone dodge). The only problem is that dodging is a decision made by one person that determines this loss for 5 people and we don't want to punish the other 4. That means the proper penalty for a dodge is full MMR and LP loss equal to 5 lost games in a row. If you dodge when your main is banned, or if you don't get the role you like, or because you disagree with someone else's champion choice then this is the appropriate level of punishment.