A Serious Issue That Affects All League Players, In Depth Article, Red Please Respond

TLDR: It is possible to game the system, without breaking any rules in the ToS, to artificially manipulate your ranking. Is this something we want as a community?

Preface The ranking system as it currently functions allows some strange things to happen that give players the option to artificially manipulate their displayed ranking in such as way as to seem lower than their actual skill level. While this has no effect on a player's MMR, and thus no effect on who a player plays with or against in a match, or their actual skill level, it can appear that a player in a match is of a much lesser skill level than the rest of the players in the match. By using the dodge feature to avoid promotional series it is possible to keep any displayed ranking a player so desires that has been achieved previously. This doesn't do anything to the quality of the games, as MMR is what dictates the quality of matches, but keeping a lower displayed ranking than your MMR would dictate you should play at does have an effect at the end of the season as the end of season rewards are awarded based on the displayed ranking of the League System.

The Issue at Hand If a player so desires, it is possible to play in much higher MMR ranges with a significantly lower displayed ranking. If a player wants to achieve the lowest possible displayed ranking of Bronze 5 the player could, If he so chose, elect to play his worst champions and roles for a large number of games to sink the account down to that level. As we all know, the rules of the ToS state players are not allowed to intentionally feed, grief, afk, verbally abuse others and other such rules that make achieving sinking to that level as a skilled player rather difficult while still obeying the rules. This leaves pretty much only the option for a player to elect to play what he knows he is absolutely terrible at playing, as it is not acceptable to intentionally feed or anything of that nature to lose games, but a player playing something they play poorly for many games very poorly indeed can achieve that without breaking the rules. If, for example, I were to chose to play something like Lee Sin I would not be able to play it at the diamond level I am capable of playing my best champions at and I would be very likely to lose a huge number of games and sink my rating. I could then elect to avoid promo series by dodging them and go back to playing my best champs to rise back up to an appropriate MMR range while keeping, say, a Silver ranking, If I so desired. There isn't a real reason for any one to do this, it doesn't help you in any way, you still play competition of your skill level since MMR is the only thing that decides who you play against, and to take this action would also eliminate me from season end rewards, but it is something that is possible to do if a player elects to, essentially, troll themselves. As we all know, it is not against the rules to play champs you are very bad at in a ranked game, or even completely new to in a ranked match (release days for new champs any one?) and poor player performance is not a punishable offense (or lets face it, we all would be banned, we all have bad games) and this makes sense because it would be a terrible precedent to set to ban players who simply don't perform well in match. We might all like to see Kaceytron get some come uppins, lol, but it would be the wrong action to take. And we all can agree two wrongs won't make a right. So players who play badly, as Riot is fond of telling us, get a pass.

The issue is, what happens when a player of higher skill elects to play in this fashion and deliberately play things he is bad at? Sure, this gives us the chance to see streams like a Gosu "bronze to master run in one week!" and those streams provide us entertainment, inspiration, hope, and an education. But he still had to get that account to bronze some how. We know that buying one is not an option. That breaks Riot ToS. So he can't do that. And he also can't intentionally feed or anything since that would break the rules. So, in order to get there he has to do something. That thing is playing champs he is legit bad at (we use bad in a relative sense, I think we can all agree he is a skilled player and his skill on any champ is liable to be better than many players) and allow his natural lower win rate/skill level with those champs sink the account. In cases like this it would be counterproductive to dodge the promotional series since the purpose of the stream is take that account from bronze to master tier. But some player's do elect to dodge those promotional series and maintain that "bronze" ranking despite the fact that their rising MMR will keep them playing against equal and fair competition. As stated, there is no real reason to do that except to troll one's self and maybe freak out the occasional high level player who looks at the match history on op.gg and sees a "bronzie" in his match. It can be some what amusing, but it doesn't really harm any one. It seems not much at all happens, a naturally lower win rate tanks the account, and switching back to higher win rate champs returns the account to the higher skill range regardless of the displayed and artificially manipulated ranking.

Several days ago, on Reddit, this thread started to receive a lot of attention: https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/4h6qis/liveyiordiehard_the_bronze_5_player_with_platinum/?sort=new

Now, this thread breaks several forum rules here (as well as on Reddit), but it has still garnered a fair amount of response and remains up for the time being. The question I pose to the rest of the community is this: Here we have a clear example of this type of thing occurring, a player electing to play his worst champs (which we know is not against the rules, even if it isn't the nicest thing to do) and then follow up by switching to his best champs once he has achieved his desired ranking to keep it displayed despite the fact he climbs above that skill range and plays appropriate competition. Is this something we, as a community like? We know its not against the rules, but do we like it? Would we like it if lots of players chose to do this instead of a miniscule fraction? Should this type of thing be possible to do and if not do we need to change the way the system functions so that this is not possible? Is it even a big deal to the community at large or is it fine for a player to elect, essentially, to punish themselves and forgo end of season rewards? What do we think about this type of thing? And perhaps even more importantly, what is Riot's stance on something like this that, technically, breaks no rules in ToS?

This affects all League of Legends players since this is an option that is available to us all. Most of us choose not to take that option (who wants to punish themselves and troll themselves? Not a whole lot of people probably) and many more of us did not even realize that this was an option available to us. Are we ok with this being an option?

I personally have no issue. If you want to punish yourself that way, go ahead, it's not a choice I would make. But I want to know what we all think. And I want to know what Riot thinks. Should we force players to only play things they are good at in ranked? Do we need a system in place to ensure no one plays a first time champ in ranked? These are all questions we should ask ourselves. These are questions we should all give answers to so that we, as a community, can figure out how we feel about this type of thing. So, let's discuss, and hey Rioters, come give us your opinions as well.

I would ask that players upvote or downvote this thread based on the following criteria: If you believe this is an issue worth discussing and considering give it an upvote. If you think this is an issue that is moot and has little or no effect on League of Legends give this thread a downvote. That will be the easiest way to see if we as a community think its worth talking about.

What do you all think?

Edit 1: Some things proposed so far that are worth consideration:

1. Changing the baseline starting MMR point for all fresh 30 accounts to no longer be above the half way point on the ladder. This will force all accounts to have to climb, eliminating the 51% of the player base that will have sink MMR wise from that baseline starting point from having to sink and have potentially negative impacts on the playerbase and ladder. Recommendation at the moment is a Bronze 5-3 starting point as opposed to a Silver 4-3 starting point.

2. The scrapping of the League System and a return to the simpler and less complicated single system using only MMR/ELO. The theory is there will be less issues (like the one that is the topic of this thread and other issues) if the systems are less convoluted.

3. Bringing back Solo Queue and Team Ranked 5s. Give players more options of game modes. Different things are possible depending on the number of teammates allowed, give players a choice of what types of teammate actions they prefer to see on a regular basis.

4. Temporary Ranked play ineligibility. Losing a significant number of matches within a given time frame locks ranked play for an account (perhaps in a similar fashion to chat restricted accounts not being allowed to play ranked until they achieve enough normal wins) for a period of time (it could be win based, or straight up time based. Hit the require win total or wait long enough it unlocks) to prevent potential systems abuse.