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Why the LoL Ranked System is a Failure

HAVENFELL·7/25/2017, 6:11:43 PM·48 votes·5,254 views

Or, more accurately, the League and Matchmaking system only functions correctly for an extremely tiny minority of the players (the Elite). For the general population the current League system is a massive disservice that needs drastic changes.

What the Hell are you Talking About?

Riot's current Ranking and League system, because it is poorly tuned and has a massive number of players stuck in one zone of its ranking system creates an incredibly negative and un-enjoyable experience for a significant portion of LoL's population. The current system only serves the Top Tier of players in any decent fashion - it essentially leaves the rest of the playerbase out to dry. Its nature actively discourages improvement, rather than encouraging it to the point that many players find it impossible to climb regardless if they are feeding or not, being toxic or not, taking objectives or not, communicating or not.

There are currently 6 League Tiers in LoL: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond and Master/Challenger (Challenger is technically Master, the TOP 200 Numbers). In order to advance to each of these tiers/divisions u need to achieve certain winstreaks in a special set of games called "The Promotional Series". The ostensible goal of this system is to create Ranking/Grade of players with Master containing the best (non-professional) players in the game while Bronze is supposed to contain the least skilled players in the game. A pretty standard idea , right? Or no?

So What is Wrong?

There are several things, but since players aren't exactly privvy to how the system works, we can only rely on the personal information we have from playing and knowledge of how MMR works, etc. However, just a cursory look at how the game works (as above) and knowledge from Rioters exposes the flaws.

1: The system, after your Provisional Matches, which it uses to determine your "Rank" assigns you to a small "area" where it thinks you belong and attempts to force you into this position. The entire time your are playing Ranked you are attempting to defy this prediction.

Essentially, when you finish your Provisionals (your first 10 Ranked Matches) the system "thinks" it knows where you belong and puts you there. It gives you a little leeway, but through LP gains/losses attempts to force you to stay in this position. It will only reconsider this idea if you go on a massive win streak (win streaks are going to become a theme you'll see) that proves its original conclusion wrong. And we're not talking 5 or 6 wins in a row - more like 15 or 20. The system is very, very rigid and assumes it knows a great deal more about players than it really does and that there is very little room for change or improvement. It used to be quite common to get "locked" where regardless of your win streak or win/loss ratio you would gain a pitiful amount of LP but still lose a large amount if you lost a game. Thankfully Riot did largely remove this system.

2: The game promotes wins streaks and luck, not consistent play or improvement until you reach the higher tiers.

The game is heavily focused on win streaks over consistent play. It takes a win streak to get into a promotional, another win streak to win a promotional, and then 6 more win streaks to graduate from a division. Essentially a player who goes on Massive Win/Loss Streaks (IE: Wins 12 games in a row, loses 10 in a row) will advance faster AND more consistently than someone who constantly goes 2-1, 3-1, 3-2 etc. - this holds true until you reach the area around Gold II+ by most accounts (where it becomes harder to win than lose in most cases). Or, in simple terms - if you want to advance in League its better to be lucky rather than good, because unless you're extremely good at the game advancement is going to be incredibly difficult - the lucky player (Massive Win/Loss Streaks Guy) will actually statistically get more successful Promotionals than Mr. Consistency because luck will advance you faster and more consistently than skill.

3: Because it is so hard to advance and the populations are so skewed, matchmaking cannot possibly work properly except at the highest levels of the system.

This is both its own cause and effect repeating to no end. The win-streak heavy system has essentially collapsed on itself, making it even harder to advance making win streaks even more important, making it even harder to advance, and so on. Essentially, because the bottom of the curve has become such a mess of different skills, experience, players, playstyles and other variables the game cannot hope to accurately set up good or fair games - there are so many people in a single lower level division/block that the block in question ceases to mean anything or have any defining traits. You can't make a good division when you cannot possibly come up a good, stable definition of that division.

4: Because players are rated as a team and not I N D I V I D U A L S, there are many factors out of their control that affect their rating beyond their own ability, further increasing the affect of luck and win streaks. This continues until the higher tiers where players are far more consistent with each other.

Doesn't really need and explanation. Unless you're supremely better than your teammates AND the enemy team (once again, favoring the elite players), their performance can and will have a notable amount of control over your rating.

So Why Does This Affect Player Behavior?

There are many things that contribute to this - not least of which is Riot's obsessive focus on Esports and competition. But the underlying problem is this; the players know the system is BS. When they see people getting massive lucky streaks and advancing while they practice day in and out and barely crawl along, they know its BS. They know the win streak system is BS and that it doesn't make any sense they have maintain a near 70-80% winrate to advance at any notable pace. They know its BS when they cannot accurately gauge their own skill or the skill of the enemy until after the game is over because the skill difference and player variation is so wide you might as well just be tossing darts at a board.

The winstreak-heavy nature of the game ALSO gives trolls and ragers far more power than normal, since they know their bad behavior is going to hurt people A LOT more than it normal would. And unfortunately, Riot's approach to solving this issue is a lot more stick-based than carrot-based.....which rarely ever works.

So You're Saying Something Must Be Done. But What?

I think this is pretty obvious and the answer is quite simple. Don't judge the players based ONLY on if they are winning a game or not. Why should a player who is losing a game and having a score of 8/1 lose the same LP with the other guy who has a score of 2/13? Isn't this just complete BS? Make him lose for example not -15 LP but -10 or -8 and the guy who fed like HELL lose straight -20 LP.

So these 2 things are needed: - Some sort of solo rating system, independent of teams. _ More focus on the community environment, rather than competition, from Riot._

Closing Remarks

The above was not meant to be an all-inclusive exploration of a problem with Ranked, but rather to just illuminate one issue the game has and what effect it has on the playerbase. I could go further, but I've already lost most of you by now and I'm not sure Riot wants to read a whole thesis. If this only provokes discussion, it will have succeeded in its goal.

Regards, HAVENFELL

146 Comments

Hela7/25/2017, 6:32:59 PM14 votes

I cant read all of that because im getting old, but i understand where you are going and I agree, the problem with the system is it determines LP gain/loss and MMR solely based off of just straight wins/losses. It needs to take more into account. If you go 15/2/25 and your top lane teemo goes 0/20/1 and you lose it isnt fair for both to lose the same amount of LP . Even if teemo had an off game, he should lose the full amount for that loss while his teammate who got an S and a loss should get about half the loss of LP. This prevents him from being held back by inexperienced players or trolls. depending on just Wins/Losses isnt fair and its a lazy system. If you have an AFK in middle of the game and you lose, the game says you Lost so you dont belong in this ELO when it was really out of your control.

Jesuszilla7/26/2017, 2:24:48 PM8 votes

I find this analysis lacking because it ignores the principles and functionality of both ELO/MMR based ranking systems and it also puts heavy assumptions on the way that statistics and values in the ranking system works.

Firstly, the first 10 provisional games are meant to give you a baseline starting point, it's not that the game thinks you belong there, it's that the ranking system has determined that over a 10 game period your performance best fits you in this area. The point of any ranking system and matchmaking system is to match players with other players of similar or relative skill.

It does this by assigning a rating to all players and then determining if your matchups are even, favored, or unfavored, then granting you points for wins or taking them away for losses based on this.

This is the most consistent OVER TIME way of determining relative skill in gaming, and has been used in chess for a LOOOOONG time. But here's the thing, in order to keep up with the system you have to keep playing. Your rank isn't going to be gauged correctly in the first 10 games, probably not even in the first 100 games, and there has to be something that also accounts for player skill growth over time. You aren't going to always be stuck in silver if you grow, so why should your ranking show this either?

The massive issue with people is that they think the system is somehow more accurate at higher ranks because there are fewer people, but that's actually a fallacy. More densely populated ranking systems tend to have MMR values closer together, meaning you are more likely to get even matchups based on the system, and since players with heavy winstreaks level out faster (yes, this is intended and good) players who overperform at lower levels are forced out of those levels faster, making for more even matchups.

Nearly everything you listed as a problem with the system is not a problem, it's the intended way the system works and the reason why it works. Win streaks SHOULD push you out of the rankings faster because it's a marker that a player is more skilled than the ranking they are playing in. Additionally if you are playing consistently with even wins and losses, you aren't to be expected to go anywhere, because you are showing that you are playing in your specific bracket.

It kills me when I see people complain that their consistent play doesn't let them climb the rankings, as if somehow they are entitled to a higher rank, without realizing that the purpose of a ranking system isn't to let everyone climb it but rather that the purpose of the ranking system is to match teammates more evenly.

TL:DR - OP's analysis is incorrect, the claims he makes against the system as problems are actually the benefits of the system and the reason it works. You don't always deserve to climb, sometimes you deserve to be hard stuck. Deal with it.

Subdue7/26/2017, 11:59:50 AM4 votes

The central error in your analysis is the assumption of a lack of personal responsibility. If it feels like your games are filled with a mixture of people that are sometimes better, sometimes worse than you, then that means you are average for your rating and the system has you pegged exactly where you're supposed to be.

In theory, Silver is probably the most volatile rating, since new players enter ranked at that level, which means there are a number of players that the MMR system has not had a chance to assess yet. However, if you're better than Silver this volatility should play to your advantage, as most new players are on their way down, making it easier for you to carry games.

Your comment about win streaks is incorrect as well. Let's say that the system thinks it has you pegged, so your LP changes are +/- 10. Then you win 2, lose 1, over and over again. That means it takes you 3 games to earn 10 points, or 30 games to earn 100. Which means to get to Gold V from Silver V, it would take approximately 150 games.

But that's not what's happening with you, is it? You're 150 games into Season 7, but you're still in Silver IV, which means you're not really doing win 2, lose 1. Actually what you're doing is probably closer to win 1, lose 1.

How would this pan out if your rating was based on KDA? Well let's take a look.

Your top 5 played champions in Season 7 are:

Fiora: 44W/42L | 51% | 2.89 KDA Viktor: 7W/14L | 33% | 2.22 KDA Ezreal: 10W/7L | 59% | 3.33 KDA Jayce: 8W/7L | 53% | 3.94 KDA Twisted Fate: 9W/3L: 75% | 4.34 KDA

It seems to me like there's a pretty strong correlation between your KDA and whether you win or lose. On Fiora, you've got a pretty average KDA, and you've also got an average winrate. On Viktor you've got a very low KDA, and also a very low winrate. And on Ezreal, Jayce, and Twisted Fate, you've got higher than average KDA and higher than average winrate.

Now, obviously the numbers don't tell the whole story, because responsibility for wins and losses can be subjective. For example, you could have the best KDA on your team, but in the crucial moment, you get caught out resulting in a bum rush for your base that ends the game. The KDA then would not reflect that it's your error which lead to the loss. But in general, the numbers show when you do well, you tend to win, and when you do poorly you tend to lose. It's all about the averages.

SEKAI7/25/2017, 6:22:27 PM3 votes

The problem with solo rating system that is independent of team is that it will promote "everyone man for himself", more so than it already is there in the game.

What's gonna happen is that literally no one will be playing crowd control and tank based champs, who by design are meant to be played more selflessly and they tend to gravitate deaths to themselves if need to while sparing their teammates of that, as scaling is not a priority in their kits. Hence with your design, people can even be demoting themselves while they win games and played good with those champs, as those champions typically end up with okay if not subpar kda even when played correctly (unless some seriously stomping). After a while, everyone will play carry and snowball champs.

That's not gonna be good now ain't it?

Oh wait, now you will say "then just balance those champs with team rating". But there's another problem, because this system now has its first band-aid before even being on the drawing board; everyone knows how bad band-aid fixes are.

So on this basis alone, I do not approve solo-rating system that is as claimed "independent of teams". I wouldn't mind a solo rating system that has connection with the team rating in some way, but not when it's without.

Noblewind7/26/2017, 7:05:20 PM1 votes

If they eliminated the promo games and made it so you simply rank up after say going over 120 or 150LP, most of these issues would be solved.

Promos keep players within divisions by enforcing win rate during only a specific set of games, which helps create a wider skill range within each division as OP pointed out. For example, if a Gold V player is currently in S3, it will take them an extremely long time (even if inevitable) to climb in the current system. The system SHOULD better enable that player to get back to gold V, where they will A) not ruin the games of actual silver players for 100+ games, B) be allowed to grow their own skill set (you can't reliably get better at the game spending half a season or more playing with people who are slightly worse than you).

TLDR: promos enforce slow climbing, especially if a player's "true skill level" is less than a full league's jump from where they currently are (common). They also help widen the skill range within each division (further compounding slow climbing and the luck aspect of matchmaking). By eliminating them, many matchmaking problems would be solved