Placement matches

infestedkibbls·Jan 20, 2015·0 votes·978 views

Not too long ago I got level 30 and did my placement matches I ended up going 4 wins and 6 losses but I managed to get silver Iv. I am not complaining and to be honest I am very happy about it. A little while later a buddy of mine hits 30 and ends up going 1 win 9 losses. He ended up in bronze 2. I would like to know how exactly this works. Should I of ended up in bronze with 6 losses? should he of been in bronze 4? Does it depend on your score in the game you lost or won? I am just curious since the new ranked season is coming soon. Any help will be good thanks

20 Comments

Seth LightheartJan 20, 20151 votes

It's all about your MMR. When you first played your game it might have put you in bronze 1 (Or something like that), and depending on how you did you would be put a higher or lower rank. The system will do that for 10 games and tell you about what tier you think you belong in.

Edit: So there is no real way of saying if you lost a game or won another where you would be. It all depends on who you lost and won against.

Cale017Jan 20, 20151 votes

The problem with this system, as it's been stated by many others throughout the ages, is that your personal performance will appear to be much lower than your actual skill level based on your teammates' performances. If you're absolutely wrecking in the top lane, but mid and bot are both feeding, at the end of the game you're still going to look like a "bad" player because once the fed members of the enemy team start cracking down on you by grouping, your score's gonna slip. And in teamfights when most of the enemy team is fed, but most of your team is behind, it isn't even really a competition at that point.

All it takes is one person feeding or leaving for everyone on the team to look like they're suddenly bad players when in all honesty they were trying their hardest and the numbers were just plain against them.

FiruJan 20, 20151 votes

{quoted}

The problem with this system, as it's been stated by many others throughout the ages, is that your personal performance will appear to be much lower than your actual skill level based on your teammates' performances. If you're absolutely wrecking in the top lane, but mid and bot are both feeding, at the end of the game you're still going to look like a "bad" player because once the fed members of the enemy team start cracking down on you by grouping, your score's gonna slip. And in teamfights when most of the enemy team is fed, but most of your team is behind, it isn't even really a competition at that point.

All it takes is one person feeding or leaving for everyone on the team to look like they're suddenly bad players when in all honesty they were trying their hardest and the numbers were just plain against them.

This argument lacks one key component. Those same issues (feeding by other teammates) are also experienced by the players on the enemy team. For instance, you may win a match you played poorly in because the other team had a very bad or toxic player and not yours.

Cale017Jan 20, 20151 votes

But not equally. Your counter neglects to acknowledge the fact that these issues are almost entirely luck based. If you draw the wrong hand for teammates, you're going to suffer due to factors that are almost entirely out of your control.

FiruJan 20, 20151 votes

{quoted}

But not equally. Your counter neglects to acknowledge the fact that these issues are almost entirely luck based. If you draw the wrong hand for teammates, you're going to suffer due to factors that are almost entirely out of your control.

Yes. I respond with this, I assume (as I think most would) everyone will have the same amount of luck over a period of time. I will allow that maybe the rare person might have a 10-game run of bad luck. But if everyone had the same amount of bad or good luck, then it would come out as even in the end. In which case, the player is the only constant and not his/her team. Now we're getting into sample size concerns I suppose. The bad teammates = bad Elo premise only holds true if you believe that you (the player) has worse luck than any other player in League. My premise assumes everyone has the same amount of luck given enough games played.

Cale017Jan 21, 20151 votes

You clearly aren't familiar with the concept of luck. You see, luck has no concept of fairness. It's a random thing that happens based on however many incalculable variables that creates a binary series of results leading to an eventual change.

No two people have the same luck, because luck in and of itself is not fair. If that were so, people wouldn't be worried about stacking the odds in their favor, and no matter how much you gambled you would end up breaking even. But some will leave a casino several thousand up, while others will leave a casino several thousand in the hole. Why? Because luck DOESN'T even out. It can but that, again, is up to luck whether it does or not. If luck were something that could even itself out over time purely for the sake of existing, Dodge would still be in the game.

It isn't. Why? Because with 10% dodge and enough luck you could go through an entire duel not once taking auto attack damage from an enemy.

Flip a quarter 100 times. According to the laws of chance, you should end up with 50 heads and 50 tails. According to luck, which has no rules aside from uncertainty, you could just as easily end up with 100 heads as 100 tails. The chances are smaller, but luck and chances work independently of one another.

What you're talking about are a person's chances of eventually breaking even on the kind of people they play with. But those chances are still in the air so far as luck is concerned. But if you want to make this a battle of chance, then it breaks down into this:

Each player represents a 20% chance of being either beneficial or detrimental for a team. Assuming that you are a beneficial player, that still leaves an 80% chance that your team will completely and utterly fail you. Going off of pure numbers, your chances aren't looking very good.

Again, the odds are against you in a situation where the relative skill of a teammate, like in Bronze and even much of Silver, cannot be guaranteed to any extent. In this scenario, where the chances are against you, you have to rely on luck to get four heads in a row (one for each beneficial/detrimental 50% chance per teammate) during matchmaking.

So your odds of getting a fully beneficial team then become .5^4th, or 6.25% chance of getting four other teammates who are all beneficial.

Whether by luck, which by nature defies all rules of balance, or by chance, which has you with a simply abysmal percentage to work with here, at low elos things are completely and utterly stacked against you, which is what brings me back to my original point.

It doesn't matter how good you are as a player if you get tails on one too many teammates.

FiruJan 21, 20151 votes

{quoted}

You clearly aren't familiar with the concept of luck. You see, luck has no concept of fairness. It's a random thing that happens based on however many incalculable variables that creates a binary series of results leading to an eventual change.

No two people have the same luck, because luck in and of itself is not fair. If that were so, people wouldn't be worried about stacking the odds in their favor, and no matter how much you gambled you would end up breaking even. But some will leave a casino several thousand up, while others will leave a casino several thousand in the hole. Why? Because luck DOESN'T even out. It can but that, again, is up to luck whether it does or not. If luck were something that could even itself out over time purely for the sake of existing, Dodge would still be in the game.

It isn't. Why? Because with 10% dodge and enough luck you could go through an entire duel not once taking auto attack damage from an enemy.

Flip a quarter 100 times. According to the laws of chance, you should end up with 50 heads and 50 tails. According to luck, which has no rules aside from uncertainty, you could just as easily end up with 100 heads as 100 tails. The chances are smaller, but luck and chances work independently of one another.

What you're talking about are a person's chances of eventually breaking even on the kind of people they play with. But those chances are still in the air so far as luck is concerned. But if you want to make this a battle of chance, then it breaks down into this:

Each player represents a 20% chance of being either beneficial or detrimental for a team. Assuming that you are a beneficial player, that still leaves an 80% chance that your team will completely and utterly fail you. Going off of pure numbers, your chances aren't looking very good.

Again, the odds are against you in a situation where the relative skill of a teammate, like in Bronze and even much of Silver, cannot be guaranteed to any extent. In this scenario, where the chances are against you, you have to rely on luck to get four heads in a row (one for each beneficial/detrimental 50% chance per teammate) during matchmaking.

So your odds of getting a fully beneficial team then become .5^4th, or 6.25% chance of getting four other teammates who are all beneficial.

Whether by luck, which by nature defies all rules of balance, or by chance, which has you with a simply abysmal percentage to work with here, at low elos things are completely and utterly stacked against you, which is what brings me back to my original point.

It doesn't matter how good you are as a player if you get tails on one too many teammates.

You know enough math to understand some probabilities but not enough statistics to apply it. You're constantly ignoring the chance that "bad" players will show up on the other team.

In short, once more, each team has a chance to have "bad "players. Assume it's you + 4 "bad" players vs. 5 "bad" players. You should win that match if you are better than the bad players. If all ten players are equally skilled (e.g., bad) than it'll be a 50% chance to win or lose. You keep assuming that the probabilities don't apply to the other team.

It is just as likely the "bad" players show up on the other team as it is they are on yours. More likely if you are not a "bad" player yourself as there are only 4 slots on your team for "bad" players to show up whereas there are five on the other team.

PS: Your flipping coin analogy was highly inaccurate. Also, there is no such thing as luck. Just likelihood. Something highly unlikely can still occur. It will just occur less often than things that are more likely.

Cale017Jan 21, 20151 votes

{quoted}

You know enough math to understand some probabilities but not enough statistics to apply it. You're constantly ignoring the chance that "bad" players will show up on the other team.

I think I'll just take the compliment half of that, although it's actually much less than half. I'm not ignoring the chance that bad players will show up on the other team, I'm just calculating the statistics of 4 good players sequentially being placed on your team. I wasn't calculating what the enemy team might end up with because that has zero impact on what you end up with, which is the point of my argument: the struggle alone of just getting a good team. You know enough English to read but not enough common sense to pay attention.

In short, once more, each team has a chance to have "bad "players. Assume it's you + 4 "bad" players vs. 5 "bad" players. You should win that match if you are better than the bad players. If all ten players are equally skilled (e.g., bad) than it'll be a 50% chance to win or lose. You keep assuming that the probabilities don't apply to the other team.

Yes, they do. But that doesn't lessen your own chance of having bad players, nor does it alter the effects of having bad players on your team. If anything, if the enemy team has as many bad players as you do it just makes things unpredictable. You aren't going to be able to get your team to work together efficiently, and so there's every chance that while you might survive to the late game with a carry-worthy score, lucky enough to be put in lane with one of the bad enemies, the entire game could still be blown by a single teamfight once the death timers get to be too long.

However, you're assuming here that both teams will have an equal number of bad players when that usually just plain isn't the case, and a difference of one teammate can mean the difference between a victory and a defeat. This isn't a case of the probabilities applying to the other team because, as I stated above, I was solely calculating your personal chances of having four competent teammates.

It is just as likely the "bad" players show up on the other team as it is they are on yours. More likely if you are not a "bad" player yourself as there are only 4 slots on your team for "bad" players to show up whereas there are five on the other team.

Which doesn't change that having bad players isn't necessarily going to cancel out. Some will be worse than others, which once again leaves it entirely up to luck to decide just how bad your teammates are going to be. It doesn't matter much how bad the enemy is when yours are still worse. A 7/12/6 Ashe is still going to carry harder than a 1/17/2 Jinx even though they're both technically "bad" players.

PS: Your flipping coin analogy was highly inaccurate. Also, there is no such thing as luck. Just likelihood. Something highly unlikely can still occur. It will just occur less often than things that are more likely.

Actually, the flipping coin analogy was spot on, especially given that you keep trying to recite that the chances are perfectly even. Whether for the purposes of my argument (a binary chance of good/bad) or your own (with the odds evening out given enough time) both arguments essentially boil down to a 50/50 chance, which is a coin toss. Yes, chance is based on likelihood. But luck is the actual outcome of the chance. You see, there's a difference between the two. Just to illustrate it once again for you, chance says that if you flip a coin 100 times in a row you should end up with 50 heads and 50 tails. As there are only two sides, barring the highly unlikely situation of it landing perfectly on a ridge, according to a 1/2 likelihood half of them will be one outcome and half will be the other.

That's chance. A purely theoretical prediction based on a set of observable factors in an otherwise perfectly controlled environment.

Luck is the actual outcome. Whatever the likelihood may be, at the end of the day it's just a measure of what the results would be in a perfect system. However, luck is anything but perfect. You could flip that coin 100 times and end up with 75 heads and 25 tails.

That's luck. The actual results of the outcome, and more often than not luck will directly defy chance because chance is only accurate if there are no other factors involved in an outcome than chance. In this coin flipping analogy, there are the air currents in the room. The speed you flip the coin. The rotation it experiences along it's own plane. How high you toss it. How many flips it undergoes. How long you wait to catch it. And even the final bit where you quickly decide whether you want to flip it once more onto the back of your other hand.

All of these small changes are what add up to the physical outcome, as opposed to the theoretical one, and produce a different effect known as luck.

So yes, there is every chance that the enemy team will have 1 good player, assuming you are a good player, and 4 bad players just as you have to contend with.

But it is purely up to luck which players go where. What champions they're playing and how influential those champions can be. Who ends up feeding harder, and to whom they feed to.

Have you ever loaded into a custom game without any bots and just let the minions do their thing? With even spawns, even statistics, even meeting points, chance would say that the two evenly matched forces of minion waves would simply remain in the center of the lanes forever, attacking and killing one another simultaneously, and without any outside influence the match would never end.

But as luck would have it, one minion targets the same minion on the enemy wave that an allied minion is targeting. That minion dies slightly faster, leaving one less minion on the opposing wave. One wave now has a numbers advantage, and can start pushing forwards until they eventually reach the turret, wherein a back and forth tug of war between minions targeting other minions in different variations will begin until, about an hour and a half to two hours later, one team's minions is able to take the other team's Nexus.

Why?

Because chance only applies to paper. Luck applies to the world. A similar analogy would be chaos theory's short hand: the butterfly affect. According to chance, if a butterfly flaps it's wings on one side of the planet, the reciprocal force evens out the chances that there will be any change made. In a perfect system a push of air forwards is evened out by the push of air backwards that happens just afterwards, similar to a piston moving back and forth. But instead, that one little puff of wind, mixed up in all the other wind currents that it batters and shifts, eventually mucking up air streams and shifting pressure systems, creates a storm elsewhere in the world.

Chance would have you believe the two have nothing to do with one another. Luck would explain that the right sequence of events happened, however long the sequence is or how unlikely it is.

And so we see the minion game. A change as small as one minion happening to target the same enemy minion as an ally is a very small shift that can build up over time, the back and forth of the forces on the map, until a much larger effect is reached. One turret always falls before the others, they're never taken at the same time. One nexus will eventually fall before the other, even if chance says that the two forces are evenly matched.

PS. You've already used luck in one of your responses, so trying to say that it doesn't exist is just plain sloppy debating. Not to sound a neckbeard, because god knows that would legitimatize anything I have to say, but if you want to try and debate you should bring your a game and rely less on petty insults and more on a deeper understanding of the forces at work in a situation.

If you want to get really technical about it? The chances of you being the only good player on a map of 10 players is .5^9th is .195%. Just over an eight of a percent of a chance that you alone are the best player on the map. However, barring one of the enemy champions from the next chance as you will automatically be better than they are, the chances of your team also being better, although still bad, than the enemies they face is, again, .5^4th (either they will or will not be more skilled) so a 6.25% chance that your four teammates will be better than the four corresponding teammates on the enemy team.

So the chances, all tallied up, of you being the single best player on a map AND your teammates, while still being bad, managing to be better than the enemy comes out to 6.25% (the chance that all four of your teammates are unanimously good/bad) x .195% (the chance that all four of your bad teammates will also be better than your opponent's four bad teammates, barring the opponent you face).

The chances of a scenario you are listing out (you're the only good player on a map with 9 other awful players) working out in your favor (your bad teammates still being better than them) is actually .0012%.

Given how low the likelihood of that scenario, I think it's much safer to rely on luck than chance. Because chances are that your version of events will only happen twelve out of ten thousand times. In your perfect system of chance, you just got the very short end of the stick.

I'm perfectly fine accepting luck as a reason for why I happened to end up with two feeders and the enemy only ended up with one, because not even my luck is as bad as those chances.

FiruJan 21, 20151 votes

{quoted}

I think I'll just take the compliment half of that, although it's actually much less than half. I'm not ignoring the chance that bad players will show up on the other team, I'm just calculating the statistics of 4 good players sequentially being placed on your team. I wasn't calculating what the enemy team might end up with because that has zero impact on what you end up with, which is the point of my argument: the struggle alone of just getting a good team. You know enough English to read but not enough common sense to pay attention.

........ I'm perfectly fine accepting luck as a reason for why I happened to end up with two feeders and the enemy only ended up with one, because not even my luck is as bad as those chances.

You are still making four fundamental mistakes:

The math you are doing does not apply to this situation.
You're overvaluing luck (by acknowledging it at all). Luck doesn't exist in a statistical or mathematical sense.
Given enough games, you will play against teams with as many or more "bad players" on the enemy side as you will with them on your side.
Everything you say implies the probability of events occurring for one player in a match (e.g., "you") are different than they are for any of the other nine players. They are not.

Furthermore, a statement that you made ("Because chance only applies to paper. Luck applies to the world.") makes me believe you do not come from a scientific background. You can continue to write responses but some of those fundamental flaws (particularly #3 and #4) aren't subjective errors that we can debate. They are such serious mistakes that using them as any basis for a logical argument is utterly wrong. Most of your examples revolve around a single event/match - in short, an "n" or sample size of 1. This is not the approach you should take. Think about what plays out over the course of 30 games, 100 games, or a thousand games. Sure, I can go outside once and get struck by lightning. Does it mean every time I go outside that I'll get struck by lightning? While this is an exaggerated example, by your logic, it means I should believe that I will in fact get struck by lightning every time I go outside because it happened once before.

We can talk about how it is harder for a "slightly better" player to carry a team with "bad" players than it would be for an "exceptional" player. That's a fair point. It means it is probably harder for a Silver player to climb out of Bronze then it is for a Diamond player to do so. But isn't that supposed to be the point? There is no system that I can think of that can instantly place a person in their appropriate skill level that wouldn't suffer from significant issues in reliability, and in turn, validity.

Cale017Jan 21, 20151 votes

{quoted}

You are still making four fundamental mistakes:

The math you are doing does not apply to this situation.

The math I'm doing is actually very applicable. It's a series of yes/no's that apply to the situation. Is your teammate bad? (yes/no) Are the enemy players bad? (yes/no) Are your bad teammates better than the bad enemy players? (yes/no)

It is, perhaps, the most simple math you can do for this situation as it assumes a perfectly even chance per teammate, both on your team and on the enemy's, of being either good or bad. The reason the numbers are running so low is that what you were putting forth was a specific scenario with an incredibly low likelihood. Just because you don't like that I was able to use chance, your entire argument, to show just how little chance there is of a situation like yours happening doesn't mean the math doesn't apply.

If there is more fitting math, you're welcome to use it. But as you have supplied nothing, in spite of trying to bash my own numbers, you have no leg to stand on.

You're overvaluing luck (by acknowledging it at all). Luck doesn't exist in a statistical or mathematical sense.

Once again, you've already acknowledged and used it earlier so you can't go back now and say it isn't a concept. And I never defined it as some mystical force that runs the universe, I actually DID define it in a statistical and mathematical sense as the eventual outcome of the likelihood that can be calculated.

It's not my fault if you can't keep up.

Given enough games, you will play against teams with as many or more "bad players" on the enemy side as you will with them on your side.

But in what order? How many matches will you have to play? Keep in mind that placements are only 10 matches. Can you beyond a shadow of a doubt ensure that in only ten games you will play with as many bad players as good?

No, you cannot. Your argument is entirely based on whether or not a person either a) has the time to or b) has the chance in their favor to play enough games to even out the scales. "Given enough matches" and "only ten matches in placement" do not go together, in fact they're almost opposites. Your argument requires what could be dozens of matches to form some sort of an even, averaged mean between the skill levels of players you come across. If you want to talk about normals, or people who've played thousands of matches? Sure.

But not ten.

Everything you say implies the probability of events occurring for one player in a match (e.g., "you") are different than they are for any of the other nine players. They are not.

Everything I said was going off of your example of a situation in which there are four bad players on your team and either four or five bad players on the enemy team, assuming that you were better than the corresponding player on the enemy team. If you want to give a scenario, be prepared to back it up. Funny how that no longer applies all of a sudden as soon as I point out that the overall odds of such an extreme case are abysmally low.

Furthermore, a statement that you made ("Because chance only applies to paper. Luck applies to the world.") makes me believe you do not come from a scientific background. You can continue to write responses but some of those fundamental flaws (particularly #3 and #4) aren't subjective errors that we can debate. They are such serious mistakes that using them as any basis for a logical argument is utterly wrong. Most of your examples revolve around a single event/match - in short, an "n" or sample size of 1. This is not the approach you should take. Think about what plays out over the course of 30 games, 100 games, or a thousand games. Sure, I can go outside once and get struck by lightning. Does it mean every time I go outside that I'll get struck by lightning? While this is an exaggerated example, by your logic, it means I should believe that I will in fact get struck by lightning every time I go outside because it happened once before.

Of course my math is assuming a single game. Because no matter how many games you're playing, you're doing it one at a time and the math needs to be addressed in that manner. Placements look at each match individually, otherwise there wouldn't be a set limit to how many you have to play. Keep in mind here that whether it's placements or actual ranked play, you're doing each match one at a time. You are graded at the end of each individual match on solely the performances in that match. Yes, these statistics are taken in over a long period of time, but as individual variables. No, just because you have been struck by lightning once does not mean you will be struck by lightning every time you walk outside. But my logic was not that a person will have that sort of a match again and again and again. It was an extreme response to your own extreme example of four bad teammates on your own team, and the enemy team all being the same. The final number I did was simply the chances, in that scenario, that your team still holds an advantage.

If you want to talk about a larger sample size, don't talk about individual samples.

And once again, you have shifted from trying to supply a quality counter to insulting my intelligence once again. I can't help that you're ignoring the basic concept of this argument, nor that you've contradicted yourself, nor that you cannot read for understanding when the context is perfectly clear, or even to think logically.

In short, and using your verbage, the statements that you made makes me believe you do not come from an intelligent background.

We can talk about how it is harder for a "slightly better" player to carry a team with "bad" players than it would be for an "exceptional" player. That's a fair point. It means it is probably harder for a Silver player to climb out of Bronze then it is for a Diamond player to do so. But isn't that supposed to be the point? There is no system that I can think of that can instantly place a person in their appropriate skill level that wouldn't suffer from significant issues in reliability, and in turn, validity.

The point is not to be weighed down by your teammates, but that is what happens. The ranking system is completely automated, it doesn't care to factor in whether or not you had people on your team that were blatantly feeding, or trolling. It simply goes off of the most simple way of elevating or lowering a player.

Did they win? Yes or no.

The reason you can't think of a system that can place a person accurately by their own skill level was the whole point of my original post here:

"The problem with this system, as it's been stated by many others throughout the ages, is that your personal performance will appear to be much lower than your actual skill level based on your teammates' performances. If you're absolutely wrecking in the top lane, but mid and bot are both feeding, at the end of the game you're still going to look like a "bad" player because once the fed members of the enemy team start cracking down on you by grouping, your score's gonna slip. And in teamfights when most of the enemy team is fed, but most of your team is behind, it isn't even really a competition at that point."

Because this is a team game, you will always either be assisted or hindered by your teammates. Because you are reliant on four other people in a match to do well in order to appear that you did well, the analysis of your personal performance will always be skewed. It doesn't matter if you go 30/0/5 in a match if your teammates still feed to the point where you lose. Personally, you did amazing. You were probably trying your damnedest to make that match work.

But you still lost, and so no matter how good your score was you're losing LP.

Which, again, brings me back to my original point. The system does not have a means of accurately analyzing your skill as a player, because by its nature its analyzing a much more broad set of factors than just you: your entire team.

You have ten matches with which to show your skill, but what you really have are ten gambles where you have to be lucky enough for the chances to put out competent players who will let you perform at, or very near, your best. This isn't a "given enough matches" situation. Yes, it takes into account your personal scores. Your creep score, your KDA, the objectives that you secured. But it does not take into account how the playstyles of your teammates are affecting you.

It's ten matches, a series of binary chances that lead up to the eventual, final, binary victory/defeat at the end of every match.

FiruJan 23, 20151 votes

{quoted}

The math I'm doing is actually very applicable. It's a series of yes/no's that apply to the situation. Is your teammate bad? (yes/no) Are the enemy players bad? (yes/no) Are your bad teammates better than the bad enemy players? (yes/no)

... ... It's ten matches, a series of binary chances that lead up to the eventual, final, binary victory/defeat at the end of every match.

I appreciate the effort you're putting into these response but the length that you write is not changing the fact that your approach to understanding this is fundamentally wrong. Seriously. This is not a logical or subjective thing. Your approach, even if followed correctly, will mostly lead you to the wrong conclusion because the approach itself is wrong.

However, related to League, your performance will determine your ranking more than your teammates (over enough games). If you are truly better than those on your team or the enemy, you will win more times than you lose. The rate of winning is determined by how much better you are. (e.g., Challenger players zoom out of Bronze but it takes Silver players a lot longer.) Sure you get some bad teammates some games. That's frustrating. But the opposing team will statistically have a bad teammate as much (or perhaps more, if you're not a bad teammate yourself some games) than your team. Thus, that equals out over enough games.

I seriously was about to type out a much longer response but I won't. Stop being insulted when someone says you're wrong. Clearly (as I said) you understand some math. It is your lack of applied statistics that is hamstringing you here. Instead of constantly trying to rationalize your stance, take this passion and focus it on some advance applied statistic coursework. You would enjoy it and it would educate you.

Cale017Jan 23, 20151 votes

{quoted}

I appreciate the effort you're putting into these response but the length that you write is not changing the fact that your approach to understanding this is fundamentally wrong. Seriously. This is not a logical or subjective thing. Your approach, even if followed correctly, will mostly lead you to the wrong conclusion because the approach itself is wrong.

I'm still waiting for the part where you supply your own version of the math instead of just critiquing mine. If you can try to say that mine somehow fails to approach the subject correctly you should also be able to show how one would. As I said before, I was only addressing the situation that you described yourself and then the consequent chance of having a complete and total advantage even in that situation. Thus far you have failed to address either point.

However, related to League, your performance will determine your ranking more than your teammates (over enough games). If you are truly better than those on your team or the enemy, you will win more times than you lose. The rate of winning is determined by how much better you are. (e.g., Challenger players zoom out of Bronze but it takes Silver players a lot longer.) yourself some games) than your team. Thus, that equals out over enough games.

Which completely explains people who go 2-8 being placed higher than people who go 6-4, right? Now you're just airing on the side of what Riot says happens in placement matches but that's been shown through and through to be an inaccurate system. Considering that we don't know specifically how it works you can't really bring it up in a battle of numbers. The only reason a higher tiered player will rush out of a lower rank is because they have the ability to get their teammates fed as well as themselves, not because they're single handedly carrying. Once again, it doesn't matter how good or bad 5 enemies are if they all have two items built on you. They don't have to try to win at that point because they have an overwhelming advantage and can simply crash against you for the win. Unless they completely give up the goat under nexus turrets to give the defending team an ace, they're going to take the win.

Sure you get some bad teammates some games. That's frustrating. But the opposing team will statistically have a bad teammate as much (or perhaps more, if you're not a bad teammate

Exactly, statistically speaking they will. But the statistics mean nothing compared to what actually happens, and there are plenty of stories about people getting carried to a higher rank due to their teammates during placements, or having bad teammates during every match putting them lower than they were last season, or even what they were simply hoping for. Once again you've failed to recognize the difference between the theory and the practice. In theory things will balance out and everyone gets a bad player roughly the same amount of time. In practice? The scales are not so even.

I seriously was about to type out a much longer response but I won't. Stop being insulted when someone says you're wrong.

It's not about you saying I'm wrong. It's about you attempting to address my background when, aside from a summoner name and some stats on my profile, you know about as much about me as a stranger on the street. That is neither your place to assume nor your privilege to condescend over.

Clearly (as I said) you understand some math. It is your lack of applied statistics that is hamstringing you here.

Not quite. I applied the exact statistics you mentioned (you said that it evens out eventually, so the statistics would be a 50/50 chance) to situations you mentioned (having 4 bad teammates on your own team, and then later going up against a team who also then has 4 bad teammates) and then took it to the extreme of that scenario still giving you the advantage (you're automatically better than your lane opponent, and your four bad teammates are better than the four bad teammates on the enemy team). Those are your scenarios with your statistics. The only issue here is that you can't handle them being thrown back at you with the math laid out. If I only understand some math then why don't you show all the math? Otherwise you have no right to be criticizing my own mathematical skills if you can't showcase why mine are inaccurate with the full explanations of your own.

Instead of constantly trying to rationalize your stance, take this passion and focus it on some advance applied statistic coursework. You would enjoy it and it would educate you.

The only reason I'm having to constantly rationalize my stance here is because you're constantly failing to get it, or to address the direct points I make to you. You've spent more time dodging the points I rebuff to you than you have trying to actually continue the discussion on topic. It shifted from the subject at hand to you attempting to essentially psychoanalyze me.

And I have taken applied statistic coursework. Once again, you know about as much about me as a stranger on the street. I'm still waiting for the part where you show your supposed supremacy of the matter with statistics of your own.

FiruJan 24, 20151 votes

My last comments on this:

You are making so many errors in your assumptions and interpretations. To try and convince you other wise, feels like it'd be akin to me trying to convince someone the sky is blue when they insist it's made of chocolate. If you've taken such course work in applied statistics, I imagine it was limited in its scope. I'm basing this on that your first rebuttal to "applied statistics" was you "applied" the "statistics"... (I'm joking here.) Really, it's because you fail to understand the the concept of sample size which is so fundamental.

It feels like you WANT the system, as it is, to be wrong. So much so, you fail to consider how it might actual be working right. Furthermore, it seems you fail to attribute it's perceived "brokenness" to anything other than your personal experiences or those reported by a select few (e.g., message board users). I truly believe you are frustrated with it. You want to win at the game and you want to feel like your individual performance matters the most. That's fine. Just understand that this will never bee 100% possible in a team game.

I think the biggest issue here is the system is not giving you the results you want (e.g., it's frustrating and/or or you're upset it's not as fast a climb to the rank you feel you deserve). Is the system perfect? No. Does it work well most of the time for most people? I'd argue yes. I've seen the background of some of the people who design Elo-style rating systems. They are very, very, VERY smart people, usually with PhD-level training in various fields of economics, statistics, mathematics, etc. Trust them and focus on what you can change to make your experience better. Not what you think they should. At least in regards to the Elo system.

Cale017Jan 25, 20151 votes

{quoted}

My last comments on this:

You are making so many errors in your assumptions and interpretations. To try and convince you other wise, feels like it'd be akin to me trying to convince someone the sky is blue when they insist it's made of chocolate. If you've taken such course work in applied statistics, I imagine it was limited in its scope. I'm basing this on that your first rebuttal to "applied statistics" was you "applied" the "statistics"... (I'm joking here.) Really, it's because you fail to understand the the concept of sample size which is so fundamental.

I understand the concept of a sample size. You seem to be misdirecting here, as you're the one who was ignoring the actual sample size in use here. You went from saying that given enough matches things would balance out when this was specifically about placement matches, which have a sample size of ten, to trying to give specific examples, which is a sample size of one. I simply responded in earnest to the sample sizes you provided, neither of which fully addressed the topic. And for someone who was trying to tell me a few posts ago not to rationalize so much, you're now rationalizing.

It feels like you WANT the system, as it is, to be wrong. So much so, you fail to consider how it might actual be working right.

Not quite. Once again, you fail to read for comprehension. Several times I have stated that, based on you saying that eventually things would even out, there's then a 50/50 chance of having a good or a bad teammate. Which means that there's every chance that you could have a good teammate as much as a bad one, but not stating that you WILL. You were giving specific examples about having bad teammates and the number you would come up against, and so I calculated based on that. If you flip the tables and instead try to find the number of good teammates you'll get or good enemies you'll face the numbers are the same. Your chances of having good teammates in all 4 slots are also 6.25% when you cannot give any other value than 50% to each individual teammate.

Furthermore, it seems you fail to attribute it's perceived "brokenness" to anything other than your personal experiences or those reported by a select few (e.g., message board users). I truly believe you are frustrated with it.

And if you listen close, you can almost hear the outrage caused last season when even the pros were saying the placement matches were fundamentally flawed. But don't listen to them either, it's not like they get paid to play this game or anything like that.

You want to win at the game and you want to feel like your individual performance matters the most. That's fine. Just understand that this will never bee 100% possible in a team game.

You seem to have some serious double standards going on here. First it's that I'm making assumptions, and now you are. I'm aware that this is a team game, and I'm aware that while the individual performances are integral, the game is still won or loss by how the individuals work together as a team. It's for that reason that the placement matches need to put you with people who are actual on par with your own skill level. A much better player on your team can get you fed without trying terribly hard and make you look like a better player as much as a worse player can feed and get the enemy fed to make you look like a worse player.

I think the biggest issue here is the system is not giving you the results you want (e.g., it's frustrating and/or or you're upset it's not as fast a climb to the rank you feel you deserve). Is the system perfect? No. Does it work well most of the time for most people? I'd argue yes. I've seen the background of some of the people who design Elo-style rating systems. They are very, very, VERY smart people, usually with PhD-level training in various fields of economics, statistics, mathematics, etc. Trust them and focus on what you can change to make your experience better. Not what you think they should. At least in regards to the Elo system.

Again, assuming things. I'm not frustrated by any of this. It's a game, I've got classes and work, plenty of other things to be worried about to concern myself with my rank in an online game. I play this game for fun, to add a little bit of competition between friends. Not to get more gray hair from being placed in a division I thought I was better than.

And again again, you've missed the point. This isn't about what happens after placement matches when people start rising and falling through the ranks. This is about what happens during just those ten matches.

You keep preaching about sample sizes, about assumptions, about lack of mathematical skills, but I've yet to see you apply any of the same critiques to yourself. To be quite honest your constant misdirections put you on par with most middle school stage magicians; it might be impressive when you show your friends but anyone who's actually paying attention can see the card up your sleeve.

You've yet to show why my math is wrong directly.

You've put as many words in my mouth as you're accusing me of doing to you.

When faced with me demanding answers to the points I pass to you, you've come back with a metaphor about chocolate running entirely off circular logic. "You're wrong and trying to convince you otherwise is useless because you're wrong." You've yet to actually show why I am, just posed and preened yourself.

Although I must say, I am glad it was your final word on the matter. Because all you've shown thus far was that you cannot understand any of the concepts you've tried to say I don't and it's been getting a bit tedious to try and get actual points from you in this flood of dodges.

Seth LightheartJan 20, 20151 votes

Derailing the conversation guys. He didn't ask about 'Elo Hell'

Cale017Jan 20, 20151 votes

And I didn't talk about Elo Hell. I stated the things that make a person seem worse during their provisionals, where the system places you at a certain starting point regardless of your personal skill level. And then, based on the other people you're put with, you're either going to look much better or worse. Elo Hell is what you get trapped in once the system fully labels you based on a rank.

infestedkibblsJan 20, 2015

its fine i get the jest of what they are saying.

PimperGnomeJan 20, 20151 votes

You have to remember that you accumulate "normal MMR" through playing from levels 1-30 on your account. So it's possible for your MMR to be higher or lower than someone elses entering your placement matches. You could both go 5-5 and end up in completely different tiers based upon this.

SukishooJan 20, 20151 votes

Placement matches are all random... so you'll be up against players of various skill levels when you enter those. The ones you won must have been at a higher MMR then the one that your friend won.