unpopular opinion

CherryBlossomTea·5/6/2019, 4:31:15 PM·25 votes·9,817 views

I've seen many posts about people complaining because they're unable to climb in rank. I honestly dont know how people cannot understand how rank works. If you want to get to gold tier, you have to be gold tier.If that makes sense. People are expecting to climb simply by playing the game when its just their skill thats lacking. Been in iron 4 for 6 months? Maybe thats just your skill level. After time, when you get better at the game, is when you begin to climb. You wont get to Challenger just because you play the game a lot. You get the rank you deserve.

What do ya'll think? [slayer-jinx-wink] Any points of view from someone who believes they're stuck in elo hell? just lookin for discussion.

35 Comments

Glaricion5/6/2019, 7:40:48 PM10 votes

It is true that you do generally end up with the rank that you deserve, but how long it takes can be absurd.

If you are a Gold 2 player starting at S3, you'll climb decently fast. If you are a Gold 4 player starting at S3, your climb will be incredibly slow.

With all the powercreep and increases in player knowledge over the years, lanes can snowball out of control, and some of the games matchmaking picks out are rather unbalanced.

Hèntaî 5/6/2019, 9:03:13 PM9 votes

I mean, when you go on a win streak and barely make gains then go on to lose the next game setting you back 5 steps people are gonna complain. On top of that the way matchmaking is right now also makes it hard. Its not even about skill anymore, its about which team has the worst of the worst. One big coinflip.

U R Good At Game5/6/2019, 7:15:47 PM6 votes

That's not entirely true, while skill matters, there is alot of rng in the matchmaking process that needs to be balanced out by playing more games to get a consistent result. This is especially true from Iron to Gold where players are extremely inconsistent and it makes it hard for the matchmaker to make even games. A persons skill or mmr in the matchmaker is the current AVERAGE skill of that player. This means while the average skill of your top laner this game could be gold, right now he is playing like iron so wh00ps, sorry about your luck. These types of matches can only be sorted out by playing enough games to even out the rng.

I know many people who have climbed divisions and tiers through sheer brute force numbers instead of actual improvement.

Succubús GF5/6/2019, 8:30:19 PM6 votes

[deleted]

Phieldworker5/6/2019, 4:57:44 PM5 votes

I agree. When we are hardstuck it’s not because of teammates it’s our attitude and skill. The streamers that I have followed there are some who are still in D4-D2. And then there are others who have climbed to Masters or grandmasters for the first time. So with that being said I 100% think it’s personal. Yes we do get bad games that are outside of our power but it isn’t every game. There is always something we can personally work on to help climb.

mack91125/6/2019, 6:39:17 PM4 votes

1 trillion % agree

AnotherFeeder5/7/2019, 1:27:59 AM3 votes

Id say this both true and false. Ive known people who stream and spam tf out of games like madmen, like 2k+ games per season. And what rank theyre at could fluctuate from plat/gold mmr, to mid diamond. It all just depended on when u looked at them. Thats why d4 has so many more players than rest of diamond bcuz once u get it, most r more likely to lose it than to climb, so they just play enough not to decay and make that elo hell that good players hate.

Id say ur skill level gives u a range, as ull have a certain chance of winning in each elo u play in, and if ur better it should be higher when u dip to lower divisions. But the rng element is still there, and for the majority of players who are bad at this game, its a bigger influence than they are. Even up to plat players tend to have a very rudimentary idea of how to close out games, and tend to rly only be better at skillshots and basic mechanics than golds. Its when players start learning how to shotcall and efficiently close out games that they start seeing solid climbing.

Ahri Baka5/6/2019, 9:17:58 PM3 votes

I disagree Games are coin flips and luck dependent unless you play 1v5 champions or with a Duo a D2 player posted here a thread how he his on a 10+ games win streak which got him to D1 Meanwhile he had 30% winrate on his smurf acc in gold Elo playing his one trick.

Makarakarn5/6/2019, 10:23:03 PM2 votes

Y E S .

Straley5/6/2019, 8:59:35 PM2 votes

Part of it is being artificially gated by these promo games. To move up a tier, silver to gold for example you have to win 1 game to get into promos then about 2 or 3 more depending on if you get that free win just to move on. So you have to win roughly 4 out of 6 games? Not to mention that your mmr can place you against higher ranked opponents so if you have a gold mmr but you are in silver I don't see why you would ever have to play against gold or plats. So your rank doesn't actually reflect your mmr which it should.

ITZ ICY5/6/2019, 9:11:41 PM2 votes

If you want to get to gold tier, you have to be gold tier.

I'm in plat 2 currently, I was in plat 1, yet as you look at my games it looks like I played a lot of them in there (~300). The point is, I played over 1/3rd(>100) of my games trying to get out of g2 to p4, where I clearly can play at plat level. I played about the same amount of games to get from p4 to p3 (including promos) when I got to plat than when I played in g2 to g1 promos. The ratio (1/3rd) was more ridiculous when I got to p1 at first, because when I got to p1 first time this season I had more than half(so, in less than 200 games I had >100 in gold while being in p1) of my games played in gold. It took me more games to climb from g2 (40lp) to p4 than it took me to climb from p4 0lp to p1 60lp. I was not affected by the matchmaking issue that gave people +30lps and then they got demoted automatically, my lp gain was +23 at best, maybe once a +24.

Or maybe you are right and me carrying games in plat 1-diamond 4 elo is just me being paired with people that are boosted and I don't deserve this rank lmao.

Curious Kat5/7/2019, 1:52:17 AM2 votes

To an extent.

Once you learn the games core mechanics, you should basically be able to perform at gold+ level. CSing, positioning, team fighting, map awareness, vision, lane manipulation, how well you know your champ, its counters, what it counters etc, then how you execute all of that together i would say is the core of the game. Once you learn all that and a few things i left out because I'm lazy, i feel you should be able to perform at least at a gold+ level.

But after that i feel it's quite luck based. Whiny feeders throwing a tantrum and taking it out on the team, 3 autofills, a dc, or a lagger, or someone using a fucking potato to play the game getting 10 FPS in team fights come to mind as shit out of your control, that directly effects the outcome of a match. Match making in general is a nightmare, and completely coin flip. (queue the hate for saying coin flip)

I mean most people at Gold+ just use OP.GG or some shit, and check autofills/champ winrates and dodge accordingly to climb. That kind of really shows a flawed ranked system that really does depend on a lot of factors that are completely out of your control.

But yeah if you are stuck in iron or bronze or some shit, that's probably due to lack of core game mechanic knowledge. Since most of those elos you can pick a hyper carry and just 1v9. But once you get to where mostly everyone if not everyone knows at least semi what they are doing, theeeeeen it kinda relies a lot on how well your team performs.

I'm sure we have ALL been there, where 5 minutes into the match, your bot lane is already somehow 0-6, and the fed ass enemy bot has arrived to take YOUR lane before you even had a chance to do jack shit. I'm sure there are idiots out there who will go "winnable" at that point, but we all know 9 times out of fucking 10 that is a loss, and you will have no impact purely because of how hard the enemy is snowballing. Kinda hard to have an impact when one right click does half your life of HP.

So yeah, to an extent. But once you get to id'e dare say gold/plat/diamond and up, then it's more coinflip and luck based than anything.

Jonesybones5/8/2019, 1:07:41 PM2 votes

{quoted}

I've seen many posts about people complaining because they're unable to climb in rank. I honestly dont know how people cannot understand how rank works. If you want to get to gold tier, you have to be gold tier.If that makes sense. People are expecting to climb simply by playing the game when its just their skill thats lacking. Been in iron 4 for 6 months? Maybe thats just your skill level. After time, when you get better at the game, is when you begin to climb. You wont get to Challenger just because you play the game a lot. You get the rank you deserve.

What do ya'll think? [slayer-jinx-wink] Any points of view from someone who believes they're stuck in elo hell? just lookin for discussion.

I agree and disagree.you can play for years and still be bronze. some ppl just can't climb. If everyone could get to diamond then everyone would be diamond. We should just focus on having fun. Because the chances of someone playing in the LCS are 1 in a million.

Zed genius5/6/2019, 8:05:01 PM1 votes

I agree with the simple argument that players who are in master+ all have gone through low elo

CherryBlossomTea5/28/2019, 9:57:15 PM1 votes

Thank you everyone who read my post and gave your opinion! Ive read most of your posts and have come to the conclusion that my argument wasnt completely true. I understand now that it can be a mix of multiple factors, including your actual skill level. Thanks everyone!

Karn Bishop5/7/2019, 3:15:57 AM1 votes

I would say player population ranked statistics beat your opinion into the ground with a double drop kick to indicate that there is definitely a match making problem + balancing issues because you don't see that kind of playrate drop for ranked if everything is "normal".

xAcidik5/7/2019, 6:33:50 AM1 votes

I think what you are saying is the tendency, not the rule. By the nature of RNG, there will always be a small group of people who get worse teammates than enemies more often than not, whether these are people who are artificially boosted (or opponents are artificially put down) because they play the game less and there's a smaller sample size, or perhaps have more people who are autofilled than the enemy team, or a number of other small factors. Of course, these cases are the exception, not the rule, but they exist.

Of course, if significantly better than their current ELO you can still carry. But it can and will hold you back as you get closer to your skill level.

And, of course, this bad RNG exists on the opposite spectrum - some people get more advantages. But, again, these are the exception not the rule and there is no real way to fix it.

The more a person plays, the more likely that these factors will average out because of the law of averages and whatnot.

Captainn Ginyu5/7/2019, 7:55:20 AM1 votes

While im sure ill be hated for this

I disagree iv met plenty of people are actually good players and you can see that by there scores and play styles if you follow there match history but oftne or not STILL end up losing because in bronze/silver no one wants to work as a team to win

HeeroTX5/7/2019, 3:13:53 PM1 votes

Let me preface by saying this: I am PROBABLY at my proper rank right now, I am low elo for a variety of reasons and I accept that

Now, that said, Ranked #feelsbadman because of this:

If I am the WORST player on my team, I will climb. I can usually keep level with my lane opponent and at WORST can usually keep myself light enough to be carried, I won't go 100%, but can probably be 70-80% WR in this state
If I'm "mid tier" on my team, I will probably climb. Again, I can hold my own in lane and can contribute in line with what's expected of me
If I'm the BEST of my team, I'll have negative WR. In this state, I will win my lane, sometimes strongly but will usually have at LEAST 2 other lanes losing. In a rare few games I can rally my team back into it, but more often they either give up by the time lane phase is over or any attempts to help other lanes merely leads to my own lane starting to catch up while I try to deal with enemies who are either as fed or MORESO than myself.

The argument would be "that shows you're at your proper elo", which as I said at the start, is most certainly true. But the PROBLEM is that you FEEL like you can play with a higher elo, because when I HAVE higher elo teammates (or even EQUAL teammates) I win more than I lose. The core problem with the "W/L is all that matters" situation in ranked (aside from trolls & smurfs) is that I don't WANT to be the superstar of my team. I don't WANT to be 50-3-2 and hard carrying past scrubs. I want to play my role in a TEAM game and see our TEAM succeed at what we're trying to do. Riot "sells" (not literally) Ranked as a game mode where you play others (allies and enemies) that are AT the same level as yourself. In reality it FEELS like that happens maybe 10% of the time at BEST.

Either the snowball mechanics have made thigns terrible or matchmaking is awful. There's no other explanation for having constant games where I look up at 10 minutes and 1 or more lanes are down 5-0. One game out of every five, sure. But if the games supposedly STARTED "even" (in terms of player skill) then that sort of thing should be incredibly rare, even accounting for the fact that I play in low elo and everyone at my level is bad.

Grouchy Poro5/7/2019, 4:15:03 PM1 votes

sooo im actually a gold player but because of what riot did to placements im stuck in bronze? with a low winrate because a gold support cant carrry iron/bronze players so does that mean im bronze or hard stuck? i guess you're the expert

BrunchOfBacon5/8/2019, 1:03:31 PM1 votes

As a diamond player who Smurfs a lot I have a unique perspective. The game and skill floor has definitely changed over the years. The first few years it wasn't too hard to climb, lots of people were new to the game and there was little to no comeback mechanics in the system.

Fast forward to today and the average player base (which is around silver-gold) has lots more experience and also a wide range of skill levels due to 1) a natural bell curve because of the sheer number of players in those elos and 2) new accounts in ranked Start around those elos which includes new players and smurfs

This is why it's become a pretty frustrating point for many. Your top lane might be a bronze player vs a gold, mid might be diamond vs silver, jungle is silver vs silver, and bot lane is gold vs plat. (I'm judging on skill not implying actual rank or their MMR.)

When you have such mismatches in skill it feels like a coin flip - i.e. Who got the really good teammates and who got the really bad ones.

So yes in my opinion it's harder to climb these days. The player base has changed, riots ranking system has not.

Also, I think any system that bases a solo q rank solely on winning or losing a 30 min 10 person game is the wrong way to go.

Kai Guy5/6/2019, 10:07:14 PM1 votes

Here. https://imgur.com/a/4SFSAf9

Banselot5/6/2019, 11:57:39 PM1 votes

People should just stop playing support in silver and focus on champions that can carry, master 2-3 champions and you will get out of your elo hell.Having 12 vision score at 30min, picking champ that you have 15games on, not understanding jungle routes, bad focus in TF.All this shit makes you lose your games and cry in the forums.Maybe 1 in 5 games is a coin flip, not more, stop making excuses.If you lost 10 games in a row its your fault.

You should be afk stomping silver players if you think that you are worth diamond/platinum