What is the purpose of having promo games between divisions?

Buzzkillington0·5/15/2015, 5:12:38 PM·4 votes·675 views

Sometimes the only reason for them to exist I can think of is to piss off players. Why do I have to win 100 lp and then play several games which usually everything goes wrong (at least for me) until suddenly the game decides I suffered enough and lets me go? Not like the skill difference is so high from gold 4 to gold 3 that I have to prove I deserve to be there again even after winning 100 lp in this same division. I can understand having to do it to advance tiers, but why on leagues? It's extremely frustrating.

7 Comments

Wickedfates5/15/2015, 5:23:10 PM2 votes

honestly, and this is pure personal opinion, it makes people play more..... they need a game full of players, always playing.... if you have to fight to advance and do it repeatedly; u will

SlytherinUmbreon5/15/2015, 5:14:30 PM1 votes

What Riot thinks it does: Create an exciting best of 5 environment that will mke players feel like their in the LCS. What it actually does: Piss players off.

COWmanLord5/15/2015, 5:41:08 PM1 votes

Note: I typically think of leagues as = bronze/gold/silver and tiers as b5/b4/b3, but in your post it seems that is reversed so f there is any confusion just swap those.

In my opinion it is to act as a sort of "test". Each game you play to gain lp is for the purpose of improving you skill and understanding of the game, while each series you go into to up you division is a small test to make sure you can apply what you have gained into action. Advancing from 1 league to the next is a bigger test and that is why it is a 3/5 instead of a 2/3.

Technically speaking there really isn't a difference between those games and every other one you play, but my guess is that the purpose is to act as some kind of test.

Sona Ping5/15/2015, 6:32:35 PM1 votes

Having "catches" on the top and bottom of something, a division in this case, makes the distinctions in the categories mean more and makes the ranked progression less of an arbitrary "slide" one way and another. Since you actually care about the division you are in, as evidenced by you getting "pissed off", it works.

Buzz, would you honestly prefer there weren't catches like and with a single game where everything goes wrong, you get kicked into a lower division?

djjomon5/15/2015, 6:55:11 PM1 votes

They introduced promos to give players more short term goals to work towards, instead of one big goal. Ie, you're silver, you want gold -> long term. You're Silver 3, you want Silver 2, then 1, then gold -> short term goals, that are more easily reached. This goes back to preseason 3. In Season 2, it was just Elo. No divisions

The problem with the system from S3 through now is that promos get even more serious, and therefore more stressful than regular ranked games. And while a ranked loss always sucks, it feels worse in promos.

Riot's attitude on this is typically "You can get trolls and AFKs in any game, not just promos. You can get bad luck in promos like any other game. We need to find a good way to fix this in all games."