Boards›Gameplay

The Placement Answers

Onegarion·1/24/2015, 3:50:03 AM·19 votes·9,898 views

I've seen a ton of post questioning how the placements worked and how people ended where they were. I'm going to attempt to explain the math behind it and the process of how people ended up plummeting in ranked. I'm going to take this chronologically starting with the end of last season.

So at the end of the season we all get our season rewards with a set MMR.

The preseason started and people continued to play ranked. Some continued to take is serious and others took it as time to try some new things especially with the new jungle being introduced. One group here is benefiting themselves while the other is setting up a disastrous placement matches.

By the Time placement matches come around Riot has been calculating your MMR with every W/L you got in the preseason. Your MMR wasn't frozen the moment the regular season ended and was still increasing or decreasing.

Now placement matches come around and everyone gets hyped. Behind the scenes though Riot is running some numbers. Here is ROUGHLY how they figure it out:

  1. They take your MMR from RIGHT BEFORE PROMOS. That means all the MMR after preseason (so sorry for anyone who tanked it trying new things/trolling) up to January 21 at 11:59 AM PST. (Mine was 1873 Plat V according Op.gg and will use rough estimates from now on)

  2. They add the average MMR of ALL league players to your MMR and divide it by 2 (My MMR (1873) + the average (which is roughly mid silver so its about 1300) /2 (3173/2 = 1586)). By my numbers My personal MMR is about 1586 which is close to mid tier gold Elo.

  3. Now comes the not so important part...Your placements. These 10 games are actually the least important part of the entire calculation. It takes you against others with the same elo, which are all players who you would be playing with anyway.

  4. after your placements they knock your Rank (not MMR) lower by an unknown parameter and give you increased LP gains to compensate for those that truly belong much higher.

Some quick notes thanks to Devi Freak Mint's comment:

If you are a division 5 your MMR can vary widely with it being extremely hard to get demoted. This means that just because you are Gold 5 doesn't mean you have the MMR of a gold 5, but you could have the MMR of a silver 3 and still be considered gold 5 by the system.

While this is just rumored it seems to be true for most players. WHen doing placements if you lose earlier matches your MMR takes a bigger hit than if you lose later matches. So if you lose your first 3 you can't win the last 3 and be even. So while going 5/5 looks good the final total isn't what matters. Its the order in which you win them. The TL:DR is earlier games have more weight to them in placements then later games.

So while it seems really unfair for a lot of people its actually working how it should. Some of these resets have been very rough on some people causing massive drops. While I think the reset was mislabeled as a soft reset and should be considered much harder since I don't remember ANYONE falling the that bad outside of rare occasions.

I hope this clears up some of the confusion that has come out over the placement matches. If there is anything I forgot (which there probably is) or more questions feel free to post them and I'll answer them to the best of my ability.

Note: If this is in the wrong board plz don't delete it. Things like this need to be known by people and it would be much appreciated if it could be moved to the proper board with them being so specific

Update: My personal Ranking became Gold 3 after going 4/6. My order was L/W/L/L/W/L/L/W/L/W. My MMR is 1633 according to Op.gg. Seems to have some consistancy with the information given above. If anyone else wants to post their games be more than happy.

Edit 1: Added some comments after Devil Feak Mint's comments

Edit 2: Completely corrected wrong MMR numbers after an overlook.

30 Comments

Mecha Hippie1/24/2015, 8:35:59 PM4 votes

Man you put way too much thought into this. And you gave Riot way too much credit for having a legit formula. Sadly the jokes on us. How placements really work is:

Even if win 10 out of 10 placement matches you will still DROP from wherever you were at the end of Season 4. Riot intentionally drops EVERYONE below where they should actually be. Why? It's simple really.

They know you know you belong higher, and they know you won't settle for being less So you grind your way back to your rightful place, and from there your real season begins In making us all grind out of our graves - they force us to play more the more we play - the more likely we are to spend money.

Their system is a simple one of greed. The old carrot on a stick. Riot is lazy, but they are also smart with ripping the money out of our hands.

HitsFromTheBomb1/25/2015, 8:37:53 PM2 votes

oh also this will really mess up the silver/ gold tier again even worse then before , because all the gold silvers dropped into bronze who will win/carry are going to be bringing up real bronzies with them just by having them on their teams welcome to no middle class lol

Stephenizgod1/24/2015, 5:05:43 AM2 votes

This is very helpful thank you :)

Quick question though: OP.GG couldnt calculate my MMR, is the Lolking score the same as MMR?

Prozzak1/24/2015, 11:10:02 PM1 votes

Just going to throw this out there, but in point one you state your MMR was 1673 then in the next point you use 1873 as your basis for calculations. I assume the 1673 was incorrect (think you would have noticed if it was 1873 that was incorrect, but if you see this, you probably want to fix that.

Grey Wolf1/25/2015, 1:06:11 AM1 votes

{quoted}

I've seen a ton of post questioning how the placements worked and how people ended where they were. I'm going to attempt to explain the math behind it and the process of how people ended up plummeting in ranked. I'm going to take this chronologically starting with the end of last season.

-snip-

  1. after your placements they knock your Rank (not MMR) lower by an unknown parameter and give you increased LP gains to compensate for those that truly belong much higher.

This statement. This is what is pissing us all off. This is what caused my son to quit and has cause me to quit League. We are taking our time, and more importantly to Riot our money, elsewhere. This amplifies the worst part of the ranked system, promos. By forcing us down below where we belong we have to go through the hell that are promos many more times. I have seen people go 5-5 and drop 4 ranks. I went 6-4 and dropped 3 1/2 ranks. I have no desire to have to go through promotion matches again.

HitsFromTheBomb1/25/2015, 8:28:37 PM1 votes

logic fail - everyone goes lower rank - so everyone plat 1 wont be plat 1... everyone higher (challengers etc) ends up in plat 1essentially making it the defacto challenger league till they all play each other enough to go up to the actual higher rank.... the only ones effected really are lower then plat ... follow this?

adamtheslayer8/29/2015, 7:31:52 AM1 votes

down vote this trash the old provisionals were 999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 times better bronze is ez but all ways my team feeds get to 99 lp drop it all because i get someone in my team 3 times in a row

Onegarion1/24/2015, 4:19:07 AM1 votes

Updated a few things.

Luna Windstar2/5/2018, 2:24:55 PM1 votes

I’m in bronze I trying to get into silver but if I get to my placement and do very badly, is it still a guarantee I will move up 1 division?

Sailor Mint1/24/2015, 5:13:20 AM1 votes

It's fairly hard to get demoted so Division V MMR can vary wildly. The expected MMR for Plat V players is around 1800. A 1483MMR is high Silver. Therefore going 5-5 without heavy streaks will most likely net a Silver I placement. Losing streaks in the first few games of placement matches have been known to have a dramatic effect on MMR. While it may not be as bad as other seasons, I don't recommend it.

We don't actually know how harsh the MMR compression is this season, but 1300 as the average value might even be too generous.

tl;dr: Your starting point will generally be several Divisions lower than your final Season 4 standings.

Sáx Man1/24/2015, 9:13:37 AM1 votes

I've heard that the reset is done with 1200, but i don't remember from whom. It also could have changed, as this was a few seasons ago. To address something else that I see in many peoples' posts; you are almost always (the exception being duo queues) playing against people with your mmr. I personally don't like the way that the new system doesn't always accurately reflect their actual elo, and I think this misrepresentation caused by the ranks leads to the confusion with each new season.

Another thing, if a person ended in plat (for example) and then placed in silver, they should easily be able to climb back up. The system isn't perfect, and it is a hassle to go through the extra trouble, but the fact is that you were losing against other low golds and silvers during your placements.

As a last point, I want to point out the difference between Lolking and op.gg "elo ratings."

  • Lolking does not use any algorithm to give the lolking score (LKS) to players. Instead, the LKS is a direct link to their current division and lp. This means that if two people are gold 3 with 0 points, but one just skipped a division from gold 5 promos and the other has been losing to drop there, both would still have the same LKS corresponding to gold 3, 0lp.

  • Op.gg is slightly different in the fact that it does use an algorithm to figure your approximate "elo." Again, this will not always be correct because it still doesn't have access to your true hidden elo/mmr. Instead, it figures approximate mmr based on the rank of all of the players in your most recent ranked games and averages them out. For this, it's probable that it also uses a set numerical input for the other players (plat 2's will all have a set number, plat 3's a lower number, plat 1 a higher number, but all set for each division and lp) because it will assume that those other players have an mmr close to their reflected ranking. (Not completely sure, but law of averages might confirm this?).