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The issue with silver matchmaking and mmr, and the placement of new players, a plea to RIOT for S9

SwiftKitten88··2 votes·1,815 views

WARNING THIS IS A LONG POST IF YOU DONT WANT TO READ IT ALL DONT COMMENT

for TLDR skip to line break (this will skip the preface) (its near the Jinx emoji)

@Riot part is 2nd line break (this is what needs to be fixed and why)

its not REMOTELY balanced

people who absolutely suck and were placed into high silver and fell down 4 division can have exactly the same mmr as people who have climbed out of bronze

this match was my freind inviting me to play a game with him.. ( i dont know ranked and he knows that) and i apparently he invited me to a ranked game and i didnt notice, we ended up losing the first one but i had no idea it was ranked so i wasn't upset.. anyways even though me and my freind were clearly much better than thier team the first game. and or side was 8k gold ahead, the 3 randoms kept picking bad teamfights.. and when we aced them (both my and my freind the only deaths and could have taken either baron or most of thier base.. one person went to the base.. 1 person went to baron

this was after 3 fights where they aced us and still coudlnt push.

anyways the game was so laughable bad i typed in in team chat "JUST PICK ONE" in the end those 3 took so long to deside the enemy respawned killed them and took baron and we lost.

and i didn't feel bad about it at all, i had no idea it was ranked and that indecisiveness was so bad i didn't feel bad at all about losing that game. we could have won upwards of 5 time and my team kept fooling around and didn't end.. so that thier fault we lost

i then see my freind que for for another and notice it was ranked and i tell him again i dont play ranked

my freind then tell me that game was ranked and i was like
"wait.. WUT"

eventually i give in and we play another

the next game... was even less balanced.. in fact EVERYONE on my team was decent

and EVERYONE on thier team was bad

again this is AFTER i lost the first one we completely CRUSH the 2nd game now yes i won.. and yes i stopped playing ranked quite a while back and in unranked i normally face golds and plats. so climbing isnt the issue its just i find ranked too stressful. and that is because RANKED IS SO RANDOM. from the moment matckmaking set this game up

https://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/2878404118/207008136?tab=overview

there was LITERALLY no way we could have lost that. two of my my teammates people could have been bronze 5 and we still would have won that. there was absolutely no contest and yeah i was gifted a free win...

but tthe thing is... THATS HOW RANKED SILVER IS

i could have went 0/15 and we would have won that game. and yet i have frequently been on the other side... with the other team being decent but my being the ONLY person on my team that could play for jack shit.

and i hardcarry them and we still lose.

i am posting this NOW because a bunch of forum morons would be like "your just complaining about matchmaking because you lost" (clearly this is the other forums people not you reading this.. you would never think that*[slayer-jinx-wink]* ) IM NOT!!! We CRUSHED them so hard it was laughable. that game was NEVER in a million years going to be fair. i could have afked all game and the rest of my team would have won.

the point I'm making is MATCHMAKING ISN'T BALANCED.

and that is almost ENTIRELY because riots system puts "new" player into mid "silver"

then those people fall to low silver

and the good people who got demoted from silver last season climb back up to silver.. and they meet in silver

and there is a ENORMOUS difference in skill level between those 2 types of players

the people who just started and cant play well yet and are getting demoted and the people who spent weeks hard-stomping noobs in bronze to climb out of silver

and yet according to riot match making system THIER MMR IS THE SAME.

THATS the issue. as long as riot puts NEW people in silver who DON'T have the skill then the people who CLIMB out of bronze are going to ABSOLUTELY FUCKING CRUSH THEM. and when u mix 10 players together with the same "MMR" you are completely ignoring if that player is actually GOOD or not.

and that means every so often u get a match like mine... were there isn't a snowman's chance in hell the enemy could have ever beaten us.

Riot.. if your reading this. PLEASE fix this.. you are adding a new tier BELOW bronze. your calling it "iron" ( it should be wood but thats another issue)

PLEASE put new players into BRONZE and not "silver"

new players have the skill lvls of bronze hen the first start out... YES after a while and after LEARNING the game and ranked they MOST players will EVENTUALLY climb to silver. but they are NOT silver when they first start.

to climb out of bronze is one thing because your opponents will make so many mistakes with any decent game knowledge u can punish them for that absurdly easy so when u put new players in bronze there is no difference.

but when u put them into SILVER, you then meet the people who are falling becuase they are brand new players placed WAY too high, and player who just spent what? 50 gaming climbing out of bronze. and u match them together. and becuase they have the same "MMR" they are distributed EVENLY.

and that w/e team wins decided by random chance becuase a player who just climbed out of bronze by hardstomping noob. WHEN THE GET PUT AGAINST A NEW PLAYER!!! THIER GOING TO HARDSTOMP THEM

and w/e team RANDOMLY based your matchmaking system gets MORE "noob players" and LESS "climbing player" AGAIN becuase they meet with the same mmr. the team that wins that is decided not by the players that game... but by the utter skill imbalance you in which u matched them

so again this is my game https://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/2878404118/207008136?tab=overview

where my team stood ZERO chance of losing.

and its not because we are better. we are CLEARLY better.. its because we should NEVER have been matched together in the first place. their teams skill wasn't even REMOTELY close to ours.

and yeah yesterday matchmaking game my team 5 long sticks and give them 5 short sticks.

but it RARELY end that way and when your the good player stuck with 4 newbs or there isn't jack shit u can do to turn the game around. and that feels terrible..

so PLEASE fix this in season 9

8 Comments

Subdue2 votes

Your scores are pretty much feast or famine in normals too. How can you be sure it's not an issue of you knowing how to play from a lead but not when behind?

Conjecture aside, where should people start? Keep in mind that Silver has always been the starting zone. EVERYONE who has ever played ranked started in Silver. Because of this, Silver basically defines what it means to be "average". High Elo is basically a measurement of how much better than average you are, and the depths of Bronze are basically a measure of how much worse than average you are.

SwiftKitten881 votes

{quoted}

Your scores are pretty much feast or famine in normals too. How can you be sure it's not an issue of you knowing how to play from a lead but not when behind?

are your taking my my scored individually or scores in general.

how can i be sure? because i have played for 5 years and roughly half of them i was behind at some point... im sure at once point in time i couldn't but even considering that to be an issue now is laughable.

Conjecture aside, where should people start? Keep in mind that Silver has always been the starting zone. EVERYONE who has ever played ranked started in Silver. Because of this, Silver basically defines what it means to be "average". High Elo is basically a measurement of how much better than average you are, and the depths of Bronze are basically a measure of how much worse than average you are.

thats not true, y can start in bronze and u can start in gold,

if you win 0-2 you are put into bronze 9-10 you are put in gold

8 is silver 1

idk the rest and where bronze starts and silver end but its not "all silver"

as a player who has been down as low as 0 lp bronze 4 (this happened when i after coming an 8 month break form league in season 5 )

i can say when i ranked into silver 1 my firest season i PLAYED at a bronze 3-4 skill level. i wasn't even remotely close to SILVER let alone gold.

silver IS the skill of the "average player" yes... however it is NOT the skill of a STARTING player. THAT'S the difference

people need to START in bronze because that's where the STARTING skill is, once they learn the game and BECOME average they will CLIMB to silver.

but when u arbitrarily put them into silver because that's the "average" skill lvl, its messes up the whole system around silver rank.. becuase a brand new player is NOT average and "brand new player" is BRONZE. they arn't "average" yet. and they certainly arn't "silver" yet.

in fact even SAYING the "average" cant be considered TRULY accurate becuase riot PUTS new players into silver therefore they are artificially inflating silver while at the same time causing the issue that makes climbed to gold more skill than climbing to plat from gold.

i mean if riot shoved new players into gold then the AVEREAGE" skill would be gold becuase thats where they shove all the new players, and when they dont play ranked, they're still gold. and when they stop playing ranked so as to not get demoted they STILL register as "gold"

so even SAYING the "average" skill is X" cant truly be taken accurately becuase riot is artificially inflating that value by shove people who dont belong in silver in silver and making those who higher in silver not climb out

Subdue1 votes

{quoted}

are your taking my my scored individually or scores in general.

how can i be sure? because i have played for 5 years and roughly half of them i was behind at some point... im sure at once point in time i couldn't but even considering that to be an issue now is laughable.

thats not true, y can start in bronze and u can start in gold,

if you win 0-2 you are put into bronze 9-10 you are put in gold

8 is silver 1

idk the rest and where bronze starts and silver end but its not "all silver"

as a player who has been down as low as 0 lp bronze 4 (this happened when i after coming an 8 month break form league in season 5 )

i can say when i ranked into silver 1 my firest season i PLAYED at a bronze 3-4 skill level. i wasn't even remotely close to SILVER let alone gold.

silver IS the skill of the "average player" yes... however it is NOT the skill of a STARTING player. THAT'S the difference

people need to START in bronze because that's where the STARTING skill is, once they learn the game and BECOME average they will CLIMB to silver.

but when u arbitrarily put them into silver because that's the "average" skill lvl, its messes up the whole system around silver rank.. becuase a brand new player is NOT average and "brand new player" is BRONZE. they arn't "average" yet. and they certainly arn't "silver" yet.

in fact even SAYING the "average" cant be considered TRULY accurate becuase riot PUTS new players into silver therefore they are artificially inflating silver while at the same time causing the issue that makes climbed to gold more skill than climbing to plat from gold.

i mean if riot shoved new players into gold then the AVEREAGE" skill would be gold becuase thats where they shove all the new players, and when they dont play ranked, they're still gold. and when they stop playing ranked so as to not get demoted they STILL register as "gold"

so even SAYING the "average" skill is X" cant truly be taken accurately becuase riot is artificially inflating that value by shove people who dont belong in silver in silver and making those who higher in silver not climb out

Everyone starts at Silver MMR. You don't see it until after your placements are over, which is why if you do terribly in your placements, the first value you see is Bronze, and if you do very well, you might see Gold. However, you started Silver none the less.

Furthermore, Bronze is not the starting skill. Remember that players new to ranked have still been playing long enough to reach level 30. It's not like someone installed the game and went straight to ranked. To give you an idea of what it would be like for actual Bronze players if everyone started Bronze, imagine what it would be like if the whole of Platinum and Diamond were dropped into Silver. Every game would feel like you got your teeth kicked in, and even if you won, you wouldn't feel like you won because you will have just gotten carried by someone else.

Silver is average. Most players are average. Hence, most players end up in Silver, even after hundreds of games. You can see the ranked distributions year after year, and it doesn't change.

https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/rankings/rank-distribution

Oleandervine1 votes

I would agree with this. I just really started doing ranked this season, and was placed as S5, dropped to B3, and then climbed my way BACK to S5, but now it seems like my games are plagued by people who are apparently well below the actual S5 skill level or they're placed there like I was by their promos completing, and have no business being there. That, and there seems to be this HORRIBLE trend with people doing stupid picks like Zyra top or Teemo jungle, when they know well and good that the meta doesn't support those kinds of off-meta picks.

ValyrianBlade1 votes

Have to say, I see this idea a lot and REALLY hate it. I can't disagree with it more.

First, it's insanely unfair to new players. For 8 seasons players have started in low Silver. Why suddenly should they start lower?

Second, I don't agree with the comment that new to ranked players are worse than players that climbed out of bronze. You have to be pretty bad to get into bronze in the first place. People who practice in normal draft and come to ranked ready, are often deserving of high silver, gold, or maybe better. Low Silver players just NOTICE and REMEMBER the new to ranked players that hard feed. They don't notice, or they notice and don't remember, the new to ranked players on their teams that do fine / soft carry.

I placed silver 1 in my first ever season of ranked. Eventually fell to silver 3, then climbed to Gold 5 (total games played about 70 that season). I don't think it would have been remotely fair to me to have started in bronze instead. While I don't think the average new to ranked player is as good as I was at the time, I also recognize that I went 8-2 in placements and got silver 1, not 5-5 for silver 4 as the average player would.

I could support an idea to prevent players from starting out in ranked during the first 2 weeks of a new season or the last 2 weeks of a season, as there's already high rank activity at those times. I don't think new to ranked players should play at those times, unless they want their games to be a lottery draw anyways. I wouldn't support lowering the starting point though, at least not without hard data showing that the average low Silver player has gotten considerably better than the average new to ranked player (e.g. better cs and fewer deaths per minute compared to past seasons).

haaaaaaalp1 votes

This isn't a problem that riot can fix. From a numbers standpoint, the average rank a new player is put at and the average rank of the entire ladder has to be the same. There is no way around this when using an unbiased elo model.

If riot puts new players into bronze next season, that will just mean everyone currently in mid to low silver will also get pulled into bronze.

Daddy Ants1 votes

New players should be placed into bronze.

5050BS1 votes

Yep its a Waterfall of new players that Silver has to swim up stream against.

If Riot put them at the bottom where they belong everyone would climb correctly.

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