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Start allowing players to play ranked before level 30, Normals experience is antifun

XinZhao2WinNhao··3 votes·2,320 views

Maybe at level 15 or level 20, start allowing players to play ranked. Or just get rid of the levels and let elo dictate everything. If a new player plays ranked, they will get the elo that matches their skill level, and I don't see whats so bad about that. when they get better, they will naturally climb.

It takes forever for new players to get to level 30, and many of those games they play to get to level 30 is crap. There are bots and smurfs in the normal games whenever a new player is trying to level an account to 30 and that discourages many players. Also, normals matchmaking is crap. Sorry, but that's the truth. Most normals games end up in a stomp either way and it's not fun for either team. There is also less teamwork in normals games than ranked. In normals, everyone has a different idea of their goals. Some people might be out there to try certain mechanics, like practicing csing, while others are there to seriously try to win.Neither of them are wrong, but it's hard to work together with both of them. There's a reason that once I turned level 30 I've avoided playing normals most of the time.

In ranked, I've noticed no bots and much less smurfs. Matchmaking is 10x better. Everyone has pretty much the same goals. I think that it would be ideal to let new accounts play ranked as soon as possible because the ranked experience is much better in general than the normals experience.

38 Comments

CLG Mercenary4 votes

There are so many things wrong with this post.

Tormentula3 votes

Honestly I wish they increased the level cap for ranked, but keep all your runes and masteries unlocked at level 30..

Lets be serious here, who in the right mind is ready for ranked as soon as they hit level 30? That's just complete inexperience and silvers/golds, where base mmr adverages depending on how well the promos go, have to suffer and lose LP.

Owning champions doesn't delay the rush to ranked either, since its one thing to own the champion, but its another to be good with a single one of them, not to mention anybody can throw RP at this game and with champion hextech shards its not that hard to unlock the 450s+some extras. Additionally, buying the champions with IP that fast just means you didn't even buy the runes for any of them with IP or still have tier 2s. Also you just hurt your own MMR going into ranked at level 30, it screws your own experience and while yes you can get good later and climb back up, climbing while gaining 12 LP per win and losing 22 per loss isn't fun, I should know since I experienced that about 3 times from my bronze 5 to gold 5 climb in season 6.

I honestly wish riot increased the levels to level 50, and you can go into ranked then, especially since they bandaided the level xp gain doubling it. At level 30 you have everything you need, runes, masteries, champions possibly, and you have a general knowledge of what league of legends is in its ever evolving patching. By level 50 you would have the mechanical skill and atleast probably know more champions for your roles rather than one tricking something you might not even know how to play to get through ranked. Irrelevantly, it also would help with smurfing since riot tends to not support it but they won't do anything about it.

Yes, you don't learn much from norms, yes you only learn from experience in ranked, but bronze and norms are very different, actually I'd argue that norms are better than bronze since everybody in norms is trying something different or not trying too hard, but in bronze people are trying so hard they throw games thinking "I'll carry myself with katarina support". You learn more in norms than you learn dropping to bronze, you only start learning once you're in silver.. in bronze its basically who can carry theirself the best.

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

Why are you worried about the people who start ranked as soon as they reach level 30? if their skills aren't good they are matched with people who are also bad.

Normals matchmaking is absolute crap and that's why most people go to ranked as soon as they hit level 30. In normals their goal is to get you a game fast rather than a good game with good matchmaking. As soon as Riot fixes that, more people will be willing to play normals.

If you don't know how bad pre 30 normals is, I suggest you make a smurf account and see it for yourself.

Tormentula2 votes

{quoted}

Why are you worried about the people who start ranked as soon as they reach level 30? if their skills aren't good they are matched with people who are also bad.

Their MMR starts in silver elo, anybody in silver, the adverage player trying to climb to gold, gets held back by new comers on a regular basis, they will drop to bronze but why do people have to be in their wake?

{quoted}

Normals matchmaking is absolute crap and that's why most people go to ranked as soon as they hit level 30. In normals their goal is to get you a game fast rather than a good game with good matchmaking. As soon as Riot fixes that, more people will be willing to play normals.

If they're ready for ranked, then why would getting a game faster be an issue? So you're worried about finding a game so fast you get a random gold people, but you'll rush into ranked to deal with smurfs, golds, silvers, even bronzies better than you? In promos you get platinums since your MMR skyrockets if you win some promo games.

{quoted}

If you don't know how bad pre 30 normals is, I suggest you make a smurf account and see it for yourself.

Been there, done that, played with friends til they got level 30, still a better learning experience for them beside bronze where jungle akali and master yi looks viable.

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

No, their mmr starts at silver for placement games, where they play with other people in their placement games. When I was in placement games I was never matched with someone who was already ranked, I was matched with other placement game players. If they fail their placement games they go to bronze. I went to bronze after placements.

In ranked, I usually get people within 100 mmr of myself based on op.gg

In normals a bronze can be matched with a diamond, I've seen level 13 players get matched with diamonds. Also duoing in normals have no elo restriction so if you have a bronze and diamond duo it's really a pain in the ass to play with.

I disagree with pre level 30 being better than bronze. At least in bronze you get matched with 1) no bots 2) other bronze players similar in skill to yourself and 3) more teamwork. Maybe since you played with friends the experience is better because friends are going to work with you. Not everyone has friends who play LoL.

Also katarina support is a legit strategy in bronze, in bronze you have to pick a champ that you can carry yourself with rather than waiting for others to carry you. You can't depend on your ADC in bronze.

Iceember1 votes

{quoted}

Been there, done that, played with friends til they got level 30, still a better learning experience for them beside bronze where jungle akali and master yi looks viable.

Jungle Akali is viable though. Explain the player 'AkaliFromTinder' who before vanishing off the face of this game got to Challenger playing Akali jungle only. Champion viability isn't really the issue here so long as the player understands what it is they are doing. The problem rather is a lack of experience.

UberAffe2 votes

A big part of the reason for no ranked pre 30 is that unless you spend real money there is no possible way to have enough champions to play ranked unless you have played that many games. Not to mention the cost of even a single rune page

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

So if they have enough champs they should be allowed to play. Instead of limiting it to level 30 only.

Or they could find ways to make pre 30 gameplay less antifun but that's been suggested for years and it's very difficult to implement.

UberAffe2 votes

I guess but that also means that someone who has never played this game before could spend $20 get all the cheap champs and go straight into a ranked game which is hardly fair to people who have been playing for a while and are trying to get out of bronze.

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

Bronze is a spectrum.

I'm in bronze at about 900 elo.

A new player would be at 100 elo or less. They will not play with the 900 elo bronzes. If the bronze who's been playing for years ends up with the new player, then that means they're at the same level. It's fair.

Just like a new player can play ranked chess and be 100 elo.

EndlessSorcerer2 votes

Players new to ranked have an initial MMR around Silver 4.

They would have to fall rather far (losing many matches) to get to even mid-Bronze.

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

I think they can make it so that for non level 30s they start at baseline mmr which is about 100. That wouldn't be too hard.

UberAffe1 votes

I only see that working if they add more low elo tiers because right now the average player is bronze and silver which means there is no distinction between below average and average players.

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

Bronze is a spectrum. A 100 elo player is bronze 5. A 900 player is bronze 5. They will not be playing in the same game, so bronze 5's with 900 mmr won't have to worry about having new players in their ranked games. The system matches by mmr not by rank.

UberAffe1 votes

mostly, you can have mmr of 1,400 and face people with an mmr of 900 (both players were in silver) so from my experience it try's to keep mmr consistent but anyone in your ranking seems to still be fair game.

Besides that I think the average ranked player should actually be in the middle of the ladder not at the bottom which would mean condensing the upper tiers or expanding the lower tiers.

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

I would like to see a screenshot of that because in my experience of thousands of ranked games I've only been matched with players within 100 mmr of myself.

Maybe there was a duo in the game if a 900 mmr is matched with a 1400 mmr.

UberAffe1 votes

could have been, I was around 1400 duoed with my friend who was around 1350 and most of our opponents and teammates were the same except for one person who was around 900. I haven't seen the large gaps as often in high silver as i did in low silver and bronze though.

Iceember1 votes

Gah. Runes pages.. The worst... I got hybrid pens. 1050 IP per rune. 9 runes later not to mention I still had to get m res blues and armor yellows then ad/ap quints. 15 000IP later. Worth it but soo expensive.

Not to mention if a level 15 player hits matchmaking for ranked they are at an unfair advantage due to:

  1. Not having all rune slots unlocked and having only T2 runes available to them.
  2. Mastery pages are only half filled and a level 15 player won't have a keystone (idk if the keystone system will carry back into s7. Hopefully not but still places em at a disadvantage)
  3. Many. And I mean many players at level 15 don't understand the game, meta, how to end, dragon control, warding etc. I'd like to think I was above most of my peers back when I started last year in S5 but I still look back and go "wtf was I thinking when I was that level? Why did I not understand the simplest of things?"

I think maybe a competitive league for lower level players could be interesting but would just dilute the population quite a bit. I'm pretty sure now riot even increased the xp and IP gains per level to double what they were when I first started so level 30 didn't seem as far away as it used to.

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

Rune pages were never a requirement not even for level 30s btw

Iceember1 votes

I understand that. Did you read my post? I said level 30 players have an unfair advantage due to them having access to more runes, slots, masteries, and just general game knowledge.

The amount of QQ that would come from your suggested changes would be more than that of gameplayl boards when yasuo is meta.

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

I just want good matchmaking for lower level players, thats my only concern.

  1. Runes honestly don't make that much of a difference especially at lower ranks. I've played ranked without runes before, it didn't make a big difference. Masteries are where it's at.

  2. This is the only main problem in your post. I haven't thought of a solution for this yet. Maybe tbh just get rid of levels all together and just let everyone start with 30 mastery points.

  3. And they'll be matched with other people who don't understand the game. That's fair.

Iceember1 votes

Alright so nows where I put in my input that lower level of play is fairly balanced. Matchmaking is designed to match people based on a system call MMR (matchmaking rating/ranking). Each win and each loss = a certain amount of MMR gained and lost. The LP system for ranked sits on top of the MMR system and actually acts as a restraining device to either keep people from climbing to quickly or falling too fast. This restraining device is what to you makes ranked feel like it is balanced better but a player with gold MMR could very well still match with me due to the LP system .

So now onto the points to made:

  1. Runes male a massive difference and that 9 extra armor could very well be the differencenter between that Zed Q killing you or leaving you with 10 HP.

  2. Masteries always are a huge thing and probably always will be. This is the main reason why level 30 is the gate to current ranked as it is the level at which you end up on an even playing field with other players. The reason it's like this is to give a sense of progression as you learn the game. Rewarding you for playing and the more experience you get in the stronger you become as well.

  3. Won't they be matched with people that don't understand the game anyways in norms? This is why I brought up MMR earlier in my post. MMR is what generally separates diamond smurfs from complete newbs. Looking back at my first run from 1 - 30 I encountered maybe a few smurfs within the first few levels. After that I pubstomped a ton of games to level 30 and from there realised I'm not as much of a big shot as I thought I was. I placed S3 in ranked but fell to S5 before the end of the season.

Anyways just in closing. MMR is generally what separates people during the early levels and generally keeps matches fair. Why would diluting the amount of people down there help anyone other than provoking longer queue times?

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

For point #3, no they won't, they will be matched with smurfs and bots in norms. That's the problem.

Iceember1 votes

Again. Understand how mmr works then please come back.

I have a fresh account at level 9 and I see tons of smurfs and maybe a true new player every second game. It doesn't happen often for me, whereas when I think about my first go around to level 30, most of the people were pretty new and I saw maybe a smurf or two.

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

{quoted}

Again. Understand how mmr works then please come back.

I have a fresh account at level 9 and I see tons of smurfs and maybe a true new player every second game.

Are they all smurfs from the same division, or are there diamond smurfs mixed in with gold smurfs? I highly doubt that they're all within 100 mmr of each other.

It doesn't happen often for me, whereas when I think about my first go around to level 30, most of the people were pretty new and I saw maybe a smurf or two.

Maybe you were just too new to notice at that time.

Iceember1 votes

Okay gonna be my last replay as you seem insistent that MMR is not a factor that separates players although generally when I play on both my smurf account and in norms I tend to meet players that are of the same skill level as I am regardless of if the LP system holds us back or gives one of us a boost we all seem to have the same understanding of the game and what we should be doing while playing. New players (and I mean 100% hasn't played a MOBA in their life) will and always will have a lower MMR than players that know what they are doing. Because I'm sure if I compare my first 20 games of league on this account to that of my smurf the smurf will have a whole lot more wins than this account does.

The way the MMR system works is that it determines placement based on those wins and losses and is constantly recalculating. That model is how the game decides 'skill' and thus trusts that number even above that of an LP grading.. such to the point that players in silver can be matched with plats. This will also boost the LP gains that player relieves as the system attempts to balance LP and MMR although you get gated with a certain number of promo games until you hit that point that MMR and LP start to balance out.

The reason we stack the LP system on that is because we can then limit progression and failure and make it so losing at 0LP doesn't equal you dropping a tier or division immediately. It also allows us to have those nice clear borders between who is G5 and who is S1 whereas a purely MMR based system would place G5 as a range of numbers and if you were in it you are gold if not you are silver.

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

The issue is that in ranked they have a much more stringent rule for who can be matched with who, that's why sometimes it takes 15 minutes to get a ranked game. In normals it's approximate because they want you to get a game in 2 minutes.

UberAffe1 votes

they are not a listed requirement but not having them puts you at large disadvantage unless you have a lot of experience and game knowledge which new players are not going to have.

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

It's honestly less disadvantaged to play without runes against someone of your own elo than to have a weird team where you have 2 diamond smurfs, 1 level 10 and 2 bots. Which is what the current pre 30 normals is pretty much like.

oSEXYPLATYPUSo2 votes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg2u_De8j5o

oSEXYPLATYPUSo2 votes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umDr0mPuyQc

oSEXYPLATYPUSo2 votes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztVMib1T4T4

oSEXYPLATYPUSo2 votes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eO3XmuVry4

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

For people who disagree please say why you disagree.

Because in my experience, nobody deserves to suffer the normals matchmaking and experience. It really sucks. even -10000 elo in ranked is better than that.

Deep Terror Nami6 votes

Can't tell if you're being serious, but anyway, something like this would simply make Ranked exactly like the Normals you hate. The restrictions are what separates them.

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

No, bots are a big problem in normals pre 30 because people want to level up to 30 fast so they can play ranked without playing normals, so they use bots. If we allowed people to play ranked at any level then this would no longer be a problem. Riot does do their best to ban bots, but they can't catch all of them. Removing the incentive for someone to break the rules in addition to banning people who break the rules is much more effective than just banning people who break the rules.

Another problem with normals is matchmaking. I've never had an issue with ranked matchmaking. In normals the goal of the system is to get you a game in less than 2 minutes and that might sacrifice some accuracy in mmr. In ranked the goal is to give you an evenly matched game. That means that mmr accuracy is good even though it takes longer.

Also if people want to get a non serious game fast they will still pick normals.

Ranked is for those who want accurate matchmaking etc.

blkh11 votes

No bots, less smurfs in ranked?? Are we talking about League of Legends here????

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

No bots in ranked. Never met one.

Less smurfs in ranked than normals, definitely. There are still a lot of smurfs but in normals 50% of the players in each game are smurfs whereas in ranked it's more like 1 out of 2 games might have a smurf.

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