Ranked System LP Rewards Needs Reworking
The ranked system of play needs a lot of improvement. Right now, as far as solo/duo queue is concerned, the game is much less about skill level and more about luck; the attitudes of your teammates, their ability to comprehend and play this game, etc. There should be a different mathematic to how LP is gained and, more importantly, lost.
At this point, and generally speaking, if you win you gain LP based on a calculation related to your elo vs your opponents' elos. If you lose, it's the same thing. However, due to the fact that no matter how well or how poorly you do in a ranked game has any affect at all on the loss or gain of LP, there is no risk/reward for trying harder. For example, if mid gets behind and starts feeding terribly, thus attracting all the negativity from the rest of his or her team, mid is likely to either afk or simply start to feed purposely. They know they are probably going to lose so they don't care to put any more effort in, or perhaps wish to make their team lose on purpose. The LP they lose is going to be the same no matter what happens.
However, if there were a different set of mathematics involved in the collection of LP, the following could be an example of how gameplay and team play changes and is stronger: LP lost is based off of a combined calculation of game KDA ratio (where kills and assists may grant, for instance, 3 points a piece while deaths subtract 1 point per occurrence); objectives obtained, if dealt the killing blow, grants 2 points, whereas an assist with an objective grants 1 point; CS could grant a number of points divided into the total player's CS at the end of the game. There could be other ways points are calculated as well, but these are some examples I have given for the sake of argument.
Post game, the tally of points each player has accumulated can lessen the amount of LP lost, should that player lose the game. In this manner all players are encouraged to continue playing to the best of their ability as opposed to giving up to surrender at 20. Someone who has reached a certain number of points by the end of the game may only lose 5 LP instead of 18, or 20. This way there is some kind of reward for continuing to play and to do well, instead of giving up or feeding kills to the other team purposely, or carrying the game 20/6/12 and still losing 20 LP just like the guy who afk'd. As far as whether or not this should affect LP received by players who are winning the game, perhaps it could as well, but as far as gains go I see that to be decently balanced at this point. But in this I see a way to keep serious players who deserve to be higher rank closer to their goal and keep people from losing heart altogether.
These are all just rough ideas that I have put together, but I think they deserve some consideration from the developers. Let me know what you all think.
