Your coinflip games probably aren't Riot's fault

I keep hearing that games are a coinflip; you either stomp or you are stomped by the enemy team. I've spent a lot of time playing with and watching people in multiple elos, the most common being Gold and Plat. I can say with certainty that the amount of game time that someone considers a game unwinnable is about half that of the time when the game actually becomes unwinnable.

Why? Because people have poor mechanics you can easily punish if you looked closely enough to how they position. They can't manipulate waves well. Their rotations are poor. Low elos make tons of mistakes that are easily capitalized on and if people looked to punish those mistakes more frequently, games would last longer.

So what's making the games so quick/coinfilppy? Shit attitudes. By being a defeatist or taking a negative approach you bar yourself off from coming back into the game.

"Kat solo killed me mid? GG she's fed I can't do anything now. She's OP, if she roams it's not my fault I'm going to self-zone myself and blame the jungler now." this is the kind of stuff I see.

I understand things like solo kills are a thing or double kills bot, but these are really minor setbacks. It's just as easy to take a deep breath and say, "Welp, I got solo killed. I need to play back, freeze at my tower, and any time Kat roams ping her missing, hardshove into her tower to deny her creeps, and get a wave reset so I can go back to freezing." If her roam fails at least once and you pull this off on a cannon wave, you've effectively halved the exp/gold gap between the two of you.

Even in high elo, the games can be just as unpredictable. I was 0-2 in my Masters series and one of my friends said, "So basically you've failed your series." I told him, "As soon as I assume I can't win the next 3 games, I won't."

If anyone remembers the post I made about hitting Master, that was the series I won to get there.

So why did I say the high elo games are coinflips? They're not really. The real coinflip is whether the usuals decide they're going to act childish and give up super early.

By usuals, you know who I mean. I mean big names who are particularly toxic.

Hashinshin who punishes you for not camping him, whether or not you're his teammate or his opponent. It's pretty well known now that Hash is one of the most aggressive tops in NA and the fact doesn't change whether or not the jungler is on his side of the map and/or he knows the position of the enemy jungler. As soon as Hash gets into the game it becomes a coinflip - what jungler gives him the most attention? And that in and of itself is a toxic, 1-D strategy.

I played a game with Tarzaned and it didn't matter we had a gold and objective lead, our Caitlyn was doing poorly so he had to stop and flame her. Tilted the entire team and we lost the match because he HAD to tell the Cait he was a shit player who wasn't going to get out of low Master.

Same with Tyler1. You couldn't convince me he's reformed with all the money in the world.

I'm not saying they're not good players. They are. There's a reason they're Master+. I'm not saying they're not entertaining streamers either, because I enjoy watching Tyler1 (just don't put me in game with him). But when these guys are the players we glorify and imitate, it's no surprise games boil down to who's the most tilted.

From a gameplay standpoint, there's no reason 75% of your games should be coinflips. From an attitude standpoint, it's no surprise games feel over at the 5 minute mark.