Demotion protection does more harm than good.
TL;DR:
In summary, demotion protection between divisions is weird. It ruins most of the incentive (LP) that people have for winning games in Ranked. And it doesn't protect people for very long anyways. Therefore, it should be repealed and replaced with a starting buffer of LP after being promoted.
Firstly, I'm not talking about Tier demotion protection (e.g. Gold V -> Silver I). That's fine. It's doing it's job of protecting long-term goals: Once you get to Gold, you're safe, and those juicy end-of-season rewards are nigh guaranteed. I mean, there's some small worries that players will instantly stop caring and start feeding once they reach Diamond V or whatever, but more likely they'll just stop playing Ranked. So yeah that's all fine and dandy. On the other hand...
##Demotion protection between Divisions is creating some horrible incentive patterns, without protecting anyone in the long-term.
The latter point is simpler, so let's start with that. Demotion protection between divisions (Gold 2 -> Gold 3) only lasts for three games. That's fine for people who are rapidly climbing, who just need a couple of games to get their LP rolling again. But for anyone climbing slowly or just holding steady, it does very little. Once those three games are done, players are at risk of having a bad loss streak for whatever reason, and dropping a division. Even at 100 LP, people have been known to tilt of the face off the earth, lose a bunch, and get demoted.
I'd say demotion is actually a pretty normal thing for people who have reached their "true rank". People's performance varies from day-to-day/week-to-week, and so it should be expected that their rank won't stay stationary. (Not to mention variance from matchmaking.) I mean, anyone who plays ranked regularly, without improving much, probably has spent a lot of time promoting and demoting between 2 or 3 divisions. I know I have.
And to be clear, hovering between two divisions isn't really a problem. The distinction between two divisions is relative unimportant. If you're sharing your Ranked performance for the Season with your friends, they're probably not going to care about the difference between "Got to Plat III and stayed there" and "Hovered between Plat III and Plat V". They're just gonna hear "I got mid-low Plat," and then be jealous of your shiny green border.
But I digress. The point is that demotion protection is evanescent. It doesn't protect for long, and people are bound to experience a fair amount of demotion regardless.
More importantly, demotion protection is aggressively wonky. Seriously though, demotion protection essentially tells players that they shouldn't care about winning those three protected games. There's two reasons for this:
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Obviously, you can't go below 0 LP. So the penalty for losing, aka half of the reason for winning, is out the window right there. More than half actually. Take for example, a scenario I was in the other day: My first game after promoting was pretty close. I didn't do as well as I could have and probably lost the game for us. I felt a little bad. Then the next game was completely unwinnable; like every lane lost and no one seemed to know how to play from behind. Because of that, I suddenly didn't feel bad about the first game anymore -- I would have ended up back at 0 LP, regardless of the outcome of the first game. That first game actually did not matter at all...
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Except for the lost MMR. And here's the kicker -- I was glad that I had lost that MMR. It means that my next few games should be slightly easier, right? Theoretically, if I push that concept, I should be able to lose all three demotion-protected games (not losing any LP, but a lot of MMR), and then easily win 2 or 3 games, quickly reaching 40+ LP. Compare that to the reverse case where I win three games first, and then lose the next three. In both cases, I end with the same winrate and roughly the same MMR, meaning my future matches will be the same difficulty. But in the first case, I have 40+ extra LP.
In short, not only are those demotion-protected game nearly meaningless in terms of LP, but it's also possible (with a stretch of imagination) to assume that losing those games is preferred because of the MMR dip.
And then, when the demotion protection ends, and you're still at 20LP or lower, you have to find your try-hard pants quickly, or risk being demoted anyways.
So yeah, I've been exploring this train of thought for a few weeks now, and I've ended up with a couple of conclusions/guidelines that I follow now.
- Demotion-protected games don't matter. Or rather, they only matter 1/4 as much as an average game, at most.
- You should still try your best to win them... I know, such a turn-around. What gives? Well, you should do your best mostly for the practice. And because your performance is rarely the deciding factor in your games anyways (a good topic for another thread). You may as well stick to a positive mindset, rather than wallow in the nihilism for three games.
- There must be a better way.
It's suggestion time. Great transition, right?
I believe demotion protection should be replaced with starting LP. That is, when you finish a promo series, you should start in the next division with 25-45 LP. This serves the purpose of demotion protection, in that it keeps you from demoting immediately after promoting, but re-establishes the importance of winning games, because LP is at stake. Of course, that also means you would start closer to 100 LP, which perhaps would make climbing too quick. If that's a significant problem, LP gains/losses could be reduced (basically extending the LP track).
Obviously the details are flexible, and this suggestion is just meant to be a starting point. But I think it has merit because of it's simplicity. It allows players a bit of safety from demotion, and puts them right back in the usual LP grind after promos; no fuss, no edge-cases, no weird incentives (or lack thereof). Oh, and I almost forgot, it would have nice symmetry with the 75LP you start with after being demoted.
I think this post has gotten long enough, though. So I'll leave it at that. In summary, demotion protection between divisions is weird. It ruins most of the incentive (LP) that people have for winning games in Ranked. And it doesn't protect people for very long anyways. Therefore, it should be repealed and replaced with a starting buffer of LP after being promoted.