Why is normal matchmaking so bad?

Regal Raptor·Feb 21, 2018·6 votes·2,236 views

I'm silver IV placed with a bunch of unranked( if they had ranked before, bronze) and ONE silver III in a draft. There is a gold III player on the other team plus a bunch of silver 3-4s. But this isn't the first time for me or other players either. It's a huge problem for most players.

Why is Riot's matchmaking so terrible? There is no reason why teams should be this unbalanced. It's like Riot enjoys making games intentionally hard. (So I'm forced to deal with a Kayn that feeds Rek'sai and in turn, helps feed her team.) The game essentially forces you to lose, win so easily (which is really never unless you're gold up), or have a full team of friends.

This seems to be becoming more and more of a problem - especially when I play alone.

Anyone else frustrated by this? Anybody know why it's like this?

7 Comments

AriCeiJun 18, 20182 votes

Yeah I've been playing against mixed plat/G1 teams (with silver and low gold players on my team) for the last couple months now, losing 80% of games. Losing interest. I stopped playing ranked at G5 because I was tired of trying to beat plats to climb TO plat lol.

Now I can't even play norms because you just get shredded by mastery 7 plats, OR, you could afk at tower and your grossly overmatched team would just win for you. I cannot remember the last time I had a decently matched game.

Bottles The PimpFeb 21, 20181 votes

Isn't normal game mmr loosely dependent on your Ranked MMR? Also Gold 3 in norms at that elo isn't that uncommon either. On my silver accounts I would regularly get matched against golds and plats. Another thing that may effect it is them premading, but I'm not sure by how much because I'm pretty sure they take other things into account like MMR, # in the premade, MMR of the person filling. I just looked and he wasn't even the reason they won lol. He was tied for second least amount of gold beaten out by his unranked and silver team mates, and he barely had second for most farm on his team still being beaten out by a silver. You probably got camped by the Rek'sai who was silver 3 last season and popped off.

I always tell my friends not to worry about the rank of the enemy team. Just play like you are equals. If you aren't worrying about being outplayed I feel it makes it less likely that you will be because you aren't playing on uneven footing or at least an uneven mindset. Whether you believe rank denotes skill, a rather dramatic difference between his elo and yours, is debatable. I don't think there is that big of a difference between gold 4 and silver 4. I mean sure the players are a bit more knowledgeable, but it's honestly the same shit. I don't think playing with higher elo people is a bad thing. It should help you improve as a player and can maybe give you an idea of if you deserve your rank or if you should be higher, I mean that in the loosest way possible. It's about learning how to carry those games and not blame your team being lower rank or bronze.

All in all everyone has those games. Probably even that gold 4, but that doesn't mean that it's a bad thing or that the match making system is broken. I feel it helps us grow as players.

deadlychuckFeb 21, 20181 votes

Well you're not required to play a ranked game, so to make one MMR dependent on the other would be stupid. Not to mention that ranked MMR decays so if you were to play one game of ranked, then never play again, then by the end of the season you'd be stuck against nothing but new players?

Bottles The PimpFeb 21, 20181 votes

I said loosely lol because I wasn't 100% sure. It was more of a theory and your base MMR is about 1200 before you are ranked right? So 1 win or loss should still be around the same. Also there is no LP decay in anything lower than plat so I don't understand what you mean by that, and if normal game MMR was not loosely* dependent on your SR ranked MMR you would probably have larger problems with "bugged" match making. Even though I'm sure not of many diamonds are going to be queueing up for normals instead of climbing. Unless you are talking about the decay in the start of the next season. I don't know if they would count that or not. Even if they did league's algorithm for calculating your next rank after promos would probably shave most of the 40 MMR you got or lost from that. So instead of being 1200 you'd be 1202 or 1198 lol. Also no there are veteran players that also can have "new" player MMR. I think it's around Silver 5 -ish. Just because someone is unranked doesn't mean they are unskilled. Or vice versa for that elo.

The entire latter half of my first post was to say that people put too much stock into rank anyway. Especially when it's "unfair". Match making tries to match elo as best it can while also setting games quickly. If you think your team is trash and you're against a Gold 4(even though that's not that high compared to silver 3+) then clearly the match making system thinks that you are equal to him. Or his team is WORSE than yours because his MMR is so "high" and your team is more even in skill. So either way it balances out.

Nea104Feb 21, 20181 votes

Forced 50% win ratio. You probably got a better team than the enemy one in your previous games.

KaiokoFeb 21, 20181 votes

Rank and Normal do not use the same MMR. A Plat can have the MMR of a bronze in normal. For example, I only use normals to practice champion or to get a stress free game where I can try new things.

You can't look at someone's rank and decide that the normal match balanced or not.